It’s been a year, or rather several years in fact. From the moment I first began working on my new translation of Thomas Mann’s epochal The Magic Mountain in the fall of 2019, a pandemic has come and (sort of) gone, my father died, I published a biography of Robert Walser and a translation of a Yoko Tawada novel that’s (not so) secretly a love letter to Paul Celan, taught in Germany, came home again, and here we are. It’s always such a thrill to be able to type the words ‘The End’ at the end of a book one is translating; this is my first time doing so (or, more precisely in this case, Finis operis) for a novel well over 1000 pages long – and it will definitely be the last. While the pleasures and possibilities of long books certainly transcend what can be achieved in a a shorter span, I am a sprinter at heart, and books this length are the domain of ultramarathoners. I heaved many a sigh while working on this novel. At the same time, I wouldn’t wish it any shorter; truly, not by a single page. The Magic Mountain is a book about time, and its mountainous expanse is an absolutely crucial feature. The reader needs to feel the weeks, months, and years slipping past in an ever more formless Einerlei (sameness). While the novel has its moments of high drama, for the most part its pace is one of methodical rumination, examination, observation. Working on it has taught me patience. I am also filled with admiration for the book’s great artistry and beauty, and it has been the honor of a lifetime to be entrusted with the task of rendering its magnificent sentences into English. I hope that the reader of my translation (which I expect to be published, by W.W. Norton, in early 2026) will be able to feel and glimpse the power that makes Mann’s novel one of the greatest of all time.