RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
Latest editorial
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]
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
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.
Similar stories
MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Friendship, Four Letters of Love, Tin Soldier and The Ballad of Suzanne Cesaire
On the centenary of the birth of the anti-colonial thinker and activist Frantz Fanon, JENNY FARRELL assesses his enduring influence
NICK MATTHEWS previews a landmark book launch taking place in Leicester next weekend
FIONA O'CONNOR recommends a biography that is a beautiful achievement and could stand as a manifesto for the power of subtlety in art