A new translation of the 1924 German classic on a man who visits a cousin in a tuberculosis sanatorium in Switzerland and stays on for seven years. The man's experience with the timeless world of the sick and the dying completely changes his sense of values. The translator is a two-time winner of the PEN translation prize.

While travelling to see her son who is cared for by her sister, Inez Stannert travels with East Coast businessman, Edward Pace. But Pace takes some medicine and dies. Pace's wife claims her husband did not die of a weak heart. Can Inez solve the crime and visit her son?

"Broadway producer Peter Duluth sought solace in a bottle after his wife's death; now, two years later and desperate to dry out, he enters a sanitarium--but the institution doesn't quite offer the rest and relaxation he expected. Malevolent occurrences plague the hospital, and it soon becomes clear that a homicidal maniac is on the loose. With a hospital staff every bit as erratic as its idiosyncratic patients, it seems everyone is a suspect--even...

Detached from the rest of the country on the eve of World War I, the tuberculosis-stricken residents of an Adirondack lakeside sanatorium are housed in accordance with their economic status and languish in their isolation before an enterprising patient initiates a weekly discussion group.