The fifty-year-old Gustav Aschenbach, a successful author, travels to Venice for a vacation. During a meal at the hotel, his attention is drawn to an exceptionally beautiful boy. Soon, his days begin to revolve around when he will see him again, ignoring the ominous rumors circulating that a plague is spreading in the city.

"Death in Venice" is a masterful story about obsession, the creator's agony, and the abyss of the end.

It was adapted into a film by Luchino Visconti with Dirk Bogarde in the role of Gustav Aschenbach.

Undoubtedly one of the classic titles of modern European literature.
Independent

Many, countless questions are posed by Mann in the dense weave of this novella, and the reader will answer as they see fit. However, an answer is also given directly by the author. "People do not know why they praise a work of art. Not being experts, they believe they discover hundreds of virtues in it to justify their preference; but the real reason for their approval is something unexpected, [...] that they empathize." In Death in Venice, in this short story where everything unfolds in the spirit of a musical composition, with the rhythm accelerating from one phrase to the next, we are at least given the opportunity to empathize with its hero and ultimately to sympathize with him despite his inner confusion and unspoken passions.

(from the preface by Dimitris Stefanakis)

"For a person loves and appreciates another as long as they do not know them well enough to judge them, and desire is a result of incomplete knowledge of the other."