Epic novels about real people are not uncommon but never, perhaps, has fiction been better employed than in Toibin's masterful life of German author, Thomas Mann. From Death in Venice, we know about the supressed desires of the protagonist, Aschenbach. In the Magician, Toibin paints this fearful and hesitant behaviour across the life of its author, thereby capturing the profound personal conflict of a very public life set against the violence of C20th German history.
(Jeremy Miller - bwl 103 Winter 2022 ) |
