Thomas Mann's novella Death in Venice (1912) follows a writer suffering from writer's block in Venice during a cholera epidemic. The writer, Gustav von Aschenbach, a man in his early 50s, becomes gradually obsessed with a young Polish boy named Tadzio. As the epidemic quietly consumes Venice, Aschenbach repeatedly encounters his object of desire without making contact. The story is based in part on a trip Mann took to Venice in 1911, where he eyed a little Polish boy from afar. That boy--Baron Władysław Moes--did not learn he was the real Tadzio until seeing the 1971 film adaption of Death in Venice. Mann, winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature, also wrote Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, Lotte in Weimar and Doctor Faustus.
Death in Venice is available as part of a Penguin Classics collection featuring 11 of Mann's other short stories: "Tonio Kroger," "Gladius Dei," "The Blood of the Walsungs," "The Will for Happiness," "Little Herr Friedmann," "Tobias Mindernickel," "Little Lizzy," "Tristan," "The Starvelings," "The Wunderkind" and "Harsh Hour." It was published in 1999 ($14, 9780141181738).
