THE MAGICIAN

Colm Toibin

While Thomas Mann (1875-1955), winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1929, seemed to live the conventional life of a successful novelist, Katia, the mother of his six children, knew that she was married to a homosexual man. According to Toibin, it was reading Katia’s diaries that provided the impetus to write this fictional biography of the novelist who gave us The Magic Mountain, The Budenbrooks and numerous short stories. He also wrote Death in Venice, based on a family visit to the city, where Mann was smitten by a young man who becomes the object of desire in the novella. The book takes us from the grandeur of late 19th to early 20th century Europe to the devastations of two world wars, the Holocaust, the Cold War and German post-war reconstruction. It is a grand sweep that Toibin manages with an ease that belies the disturbing and violent times that Mann and his family lived through. This is a must-read from one of the foremost writers of our time.

BARRY REYNOLDS VERDICT: A novel life