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Drink

The surprising joy of involuntary sobriety

28 January 2023

9:00 AM

28 January 2023

9:00 AM

I have just finished a sojourn with a curious twist. Readers of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain will remember Hans Castorp, who set off to visit a cousin confined to a sanatorium in the Alps. Nothing went according to plan. The cousin fell into a sharp decline and died. Castorp himself was diagnosed as suffering from a lung ailment and spent the next seven years in the sanitorium.

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