MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Thomas Mann’s doubt and pain
(L to R) Thomas Mann and Erich Muhsam who was tortured to death in the Oranienburg (35Km north of Berlin) concentration camp on July 11 1934
[Carl Van Vechten/Creative Commons and Pic: Musee National de la Resistance] 
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
The Magician
by Colm Toibin
Viking £9.49
IRISH novelist Colm Toibin’s novel about the magician, as Thomas Mann was known in his family circle, spans the German’s entire lifetime centring on the man — and his times — the writer, husband, father, brother, and, yes, on his concealed homoerotic fantasies.
Toibin expertly recreates the world of Mann and the turbulent times and does not excuse Mann’s uncritical support for WWI, which was shared by the literary elites. However, Mann’s elder and left-wing brother, Heinrich is an interesting character in his own right in the novel — its recognised moral authority.
During the days following WWI, Heinrich was part of the movement in Munich, supported and led by socialist and communist writers such as Kurt Eisner, Ernst Toller, and Erich Muhsam, which led to the establishment of the short-lived Munich Soviet Republic.
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As Caspar David Friedrich’s 250th anniversary is celebrated in Berlin and New York, JENNY FARRELL urges viewers of the German Romantic painter to understand its true historical context, and beware its co-option by the far-right
As Caspar David Friedrich’s 250th anniversary is celebrated in Berlin and New York, JENNY FARRELL urges viewers of the German Romantic painter to understand its true historical context, and beware his co-option by the far right
