Ratings7
Average rating4.1
Selected as a Notable Book, a Critics' Top Book, and a Top 10 Book of Historical Fiction by The New York Times, and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Washington Post, Vogue, and The Wall Street Journal From one of today's most brilliant and beloved novelists, a dazzling, epic family saga set across a half-century spanning World War I, the rise of Hitler, World War II, and the Cold War. Colm Tóibín's magnificent new novel opens in a provincial German city at the turn of the twentieth century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice. He is the most successful novelist of his time, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, a public man whose private life remains secret. He is expected to lead the condemnation of Hitler, whom he underestimates. His oldest daughter and son, leaders of Bohemianism and of the anti-Nazi movement, share lovers. He flees Germany for Switzerland, France and, ultimately, America, living first in Princeton and then in Los Angeles. In a stunning marriage of research and imagination, Tóibín explores the heart and mind of a writer whose gift is unparalleled and whose life is driven by a need to belong and the anguish of illicit desire. The Magician is an intimate, astonishingly complex portrait of Mann, his magnificent and complex wife Katia, and the times in which they lived--the first world war, the rise of Hitler, World War II, the Cold War, and exile. This is a man and a family fiercely engaged by the world, profoundly flawed, and unforgettable. As People magazine said about The Master, "It's a delicate, mysterious process, this act of creation, fraught with psychological tension, and Tóibín captures it beautifully."
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A fictionalized biography of Thomas Mann, who's own novels had many autobiographical elements. While this well executed, and a great source of information about Mann and his family, my attention often drifted while the novel lost itself in too many details. It's written like a biography with an insight into Mann's mind. We hear so many conversations, and so many details about their different emigration routes, I would have wished for more magic.
This was a brilliant accomplishment, and a fascinating window into the life of Thomas Mann and his family. I learned a great deal, and enjoyed the detail and insights. It did read more like non-fiction, but that was fine for me. I also wondered if it could've been a bit shorter, but perhaps I felt this way because I was listening. The narration was excellent.