The Magician: A Novel

"Colm TóibÍn’s magnificent biographical novel about Thomas Mann encompasses the full sweep of the German Nobel Prize-winner’s life, including his carefully repressed homosexuality, the genesis of major works like the story “Death in Venice” and The Magic Mountain, and the devastating rise of Nazism, which sent him, his wealthy, secular Jewish wife, and their large, often ungovernable brood of artistic offspring into exile in Switzerland and the U.S. With its intertwined portraits of a deep, complicated writer and a world that changed beyond recognition in his lifetime, The Magician should appeal to history buffs as well as literary mavens."