Young Frau Stavenhitter, or Frau Mackenthun, or old Fraulein Distelmann. The suggestion was that this woman’s private life was a matter of some controversy and speculation among the burghers of the town. She would ask what her interlocutor thought about some normal and respectable woman within their group of associates. Yet there was kindness in her flashing eyes as she asked her guest about work and family and plans for the summer, and, speaking of the summer, she would wish to know about the relative comfort of various hotels in Travemünde, and then she would ask about grand hotels in places as distant as Trouville or Collioure or some resort on the Adriatic.Īnd soon she would pose an unsettling question. Her allure came from the atmosphere of foreignness and fragility that she exuded with such charm.
On coming into the drawing room, having glanced around her, Julia would find among the guests one person, usually a man, someone unlikely such as Herr Kellinghusen, who was neither young nor old, or Franz Cadovius, his squint inherited from his mother, or Judge August Leverkühn, with his thin lips and clipped mustache, and this man would become the focus of her attention. She joined the company with an air of reluctance, giving the impression that she had, just now, been alone with herself in a place more interesting than festive Lübeck. Her dress was white, and her black shoes, ordered specially from Majorca, were simple like a dancer’s shoes. With her hair pinned back severely and tied in a colored bow, Julia stepped out from her bedroom. Their baby brother Viktor was sleeping in an upper room. Heinrich had to warn Carla to be quiet or they would be told to go to bed and they would miss the moment. Soon, they knew, their mother would appear. Thomas and his older brother Heinrich and their sisters Lula and Carla watched from the first landing. Until everyone had been ushered into the drawing room, Julia Mann remained in her bedroom. His mother waited upstairs while the servants took coats and scarves and hats from the guests. ExcerptĬhapter 1: Lübeck, 1891 Chapter 1 Lübeck, 1891 In this “exquisitely sensitive” ( The Wall Street Journal) novel, Tóibín has crafted “a complex but empathetic portrayal of a writer in a lifelong battle against his innermost desires, his family, and the tumultuous times they endure” ( Time), and “you’ll find yourself savoring every page” ( Vogue).
He flees Germany for Switzerland, France and, ultimately, America, living first in Princeton and then in Los Angeles. His oldest daughter and son, leaders of Bohemianism and of the anti-Nazi movement, share lovers. He is expected to lead the condemnation of Hitler, whom he underestimates. He is the most successful novelist of his time, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, a public man whose private life remains secret. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. The Magician 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. 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 that is “a feat of literary sorcery in its own right” ( Oprah Daily). Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg Businessweek A New York Times Notable Book, Critic’s Top Pick, and Top Ten Book of Historical Fiction