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Having brilliantly reconstructed the final years of Henry James in The Master, Toibin turns his attention to Thomas Mann in this lyrical evocation of the life of a twentieth-century literary titan.
Waterstones Irish Book of the Month for March 2022
Winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize 2022
From one of our greatest living writers comes a sweeping novel of unrequited love and exile, war and family.
The Magician tells the story of Thomas Mann, whose life was filled with great acclaim and contradiction. He would find himself on the wrong side of history in the First World War, cheerleading the German army, but have a clear vision of the future in the second, anticipating the horrors of Nazism.
He would have six children and keep his homosexuality hidden; he was a man forever connected to his family and yet bore witness to the ravages of suicide. He would write some of the greatest works of European literature, and win the Nobel Prize, but would never return to the country that inspired his creativity.
Through one life, Colm Toibin tells the breathtaking story of the twentieth century.
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780241970584
Number of pages: 448
Weight: 309 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 27 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'This is an enormously ambitious book, one in which the intimate and the momentous are exquisitely balanced. It is the story of a man who spent almost all of his adult life behind a desk or going for sedate little post-prandial walks with his wife. From this sedentary existence Toibin has fashioned an epic' - The Guardian
'I love everything Colm Toibin has written and The Magician is another masterpiece ... Historical fiction at its best' - Nicola Sturgeon
'Sumptuous and satisfying' - The Times, a best fiction book of 2021
'The Magician, recreates as biographical fiction the life, thoughts and achievements of Thomas Mann. It is dark, beautifully constructed and, I think, as near as one author can get to entering the mind of another' - Melvyn Bragg
'The Magician uses the life of Thomas Mann to explore the complex relationships between intimacy and history, public and private lives, and the slippery nature of creativity itself. I found it mesmerising' - Fintan O'Toole
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