The Magic Mountain

A true journey in every sense of the word, with a masterful sense of pacing and style. I feel like it opened a portal to a sort of zeitgeist pre-WWI that allowed me to grasp at least a grain of what the typical european civilian experienced. Personally loved how the narrator treated the main character like a guinea pig they inserted into experiments and how they'd make jovial mocking remarks about him. It made the narrator a character too, that you could converse with, who you were in on a joke with. Very cool.