This is a wonderful novel: fiction based in reality, aspects of the story of a great writer, Thomas Mann, told by another, Colm Tóibín. I am not a biography person, and this novel does what a novel does: create a character who goes through a peripeteia and in so doing enlightens our own life and world. The fact that the character is a historical one, and a writer I have read with great enjoyment, makes it doubly interesting. In fact, it deepens the many insights the novel affords about living, creating, surviving at a crucial time of the 20c (Mann being German and living when he does is of course crucial to the novel's objectives).

Mann's life is definitely worth telling (the shadow of ancestors, the search for identity, the choice of partner, the construction of a career, the finding of subjects, the making of a family...) I found the way Tóibín marshals the disparate elements of anyone's life into a coherent fictional narrative deeply interesting, as well as the wonderful style of his prose, able to make you be in a place with just a few well-chosen words, a comment directing your attention to an object, the description of a particular dress. The links between biography and fictional creation are explored thoughtfully, always in an entertaining manner (Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain...). Again, this is a fiction and the ambiguities, omissions, emphasis, leave the reader able to complete the possible picture either using her imagination, or even sending her back to Mann's novels, or the extensive further reading section the author has included - he has definitely done his reading!!

A great book that will give pleasure to all readers interested in the life of an artist and the difficulties, compromises, decisions made in order to fulfil an ambition. I loved it. Thank you so much to Penguin via NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this wonderful novel.

I have always enjoyed reading Colm Toibin’s novels. So, I was surprised to find that ‘The Magician’ was a struggle at times. I am assuming that a lot of research went into the writing of it and perhaps the desire to include all the biographical detail interfered with the author’s usually brilliant ability to create living, breathing characters with real emotional depth.
That said, Toibin is writing about a fascinating time in Germany’s history and the different conversations about Fascism and its aftermath are absorbing. However, I kept on wondering whether a traditionally written biography might have served the author’s purpose better?
My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin General UK for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

The Magician tells us a fictionalised version of Thomas Mann's life. In it Toibin takes some liberties, sure, but I hear the story is well researched and much of it is based on accounts and diaries from those around him, including his children.
I haven't read any of his books (yet), but I was intrigued by the man, and this book, although sometimes a bit dry and distant (I agree with many other reviewers there), still did not disappoint me (although perhaps the book could be condensed, as it doesn't feel like much happens).
I enjoyed learning about Mann, and I will be picking up other books from Colm Toibin. I think fans of Thomas Mann will enjoy reading this book.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

This is a fictionalised telling of the life of German author, Thomas Mann. Whilst it seemed meticulously researched, the authorial voice felt dispassionate and dry to me. I assume this was an intended style used to give the book a biographical feel, but it meant I didn't really connect with it.

I thought this was pretty dreadful and I could hardly bear to finish it. Such a disappointment. I know Toibin can write better than this. Has he become lazy and is just resting on his reputation? It’s a fictionalised biography of Thomas Mann and surely any fictionalised biography is a chance for the author to indulge his imagination in a way that he can’t in a non-fiction account. And yet the writing here is so flat, with so little emotion, that I got no insight into Mann’s feelings, no sense of any interiority, but just a bland blow-by-blow account of a life. Perhaps Toibin was trying to reflect Mann’s own lack of affect but surely he should have at least attempted to get inside Mann’s head. The writing skims over cataclysmic events such as WWI, the rise of Hitler, and the traumas of Mann’s family members, and there’s little sense of time passing. The constant harping on about Mann’s repressed homosexuality is overdone and some of the accounts of his early adolescent fumblings puzzling rather than enlightening. The recreated dialogue is particularly weak and no one comes truly alive. I can only assume Toibin has done his research and that the book is at least factually accurate, but as a novel I found it uninspiring and unengaging.

I read a lot, and this is one of the best books I've read for ages.

The Magician of the title is Thomas Mann, German novelist and is set in the early/mid 20th century - with much of the action taking place around the two world wars.

I knew nothing about Thomas Mann beforehand, but have spent a whole load of time on the internet after I finished, reading up more about him, his wife, and six children - all of whom are immensely fascinating and pursue their own passions.

During the war period, anticipating the Nazi terror, Mann is able to escape to the US, where he is torn between making political statements, and living a quiet life as a novelist. His six children are all incredible characters, each ruled by their own passions, and this infuses the novel with life, emotion, love and conflict.

Such a fascinating story.

Colm Toibin wrote my very favourite book, Brooklyn, so it's strange that I've never picked up another one of his novels. When The Magician popped up in my email, it seemed like the perfect time, even though I initially wasn't drawn to a very chunky novel about Thomas Mann, a writer that I have never even read.

I am glad I read this, although it doesn't come anywhere close to reaching my love of Brooklyn. Thomas Mann is a writer born in Lübeck in the 1870s, and The Magician tells the story of his life: his aspirations, his family, the way his life interacts with the tumultuous events of the 20th century. Colm Toibin writes sparsely and with detachment, and his sentences are full of quotidian detail. I absolutely adored this in Brooklyn; I felt as if his characters were real, solid people and during a reread, I dreamily wandered the streets of Brooklyn imagining where Eilis lived. But because Thomas Mann was a real person, I wasn't sure what was fictional and what was real; how much Colm Toibin invented and how much was siphoned from Thomas Mann's (seemingly very large cachet of) diaries and letters. So, yes, it felt a lot like I was reading a fairly unimaginative biography, with a precise parade of sequential events - which is not something I particularly relished.

I wasn't sure how much I cared about the book in the first third. I enjoyed it a lot more once the novel reached the 1930s, as this is a period that holds endless fascination for me. And, as the novel progressed, I grew more and more interested in the cast of characters surrounding Thomas, and developed more affection for the writer himself. I think that's the best part of reading long novels set over a number of years: you grow used to the characters, or at least I do, and you know them and see the way their lives and selfhoods fluctuate over the years. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book, but I do want to read a Thomas Mann novel now.

I only got about a third of the way through this book. I loved Colm Tobin's writing in House of names bur he has lost his way here. The book attempts to fictionalise the life of Thomas Mann but fails to invest even a single sentence with anything that creates character or narrative that would make a reader want to go on.

This is by far the best book I've read this year. Toibin takes us back in time to before the first world war when the celebrated German writer Thomas Mann was a boy who could only dream of fame. It is well known that Mann, in spite of his fathering six children, was a closet gay and this fictionalisation takes us into his interior world. We follow Mann through his infatuation with twins Katia and Klaus (he eventually married Katia)to his growing fame and recognition as a writer. He was slow to recognise the threat from Hitler and had to flee Germany when Hitler came to power. Even so it took him some time to denounce Nazism although his older brother Heinrich and children Klaus and Erika were very outspoken against it for many years.

I loved everything about this book. It is peopled with characters from the German intelligentsia. We hear about Alma Mahler who had what can only be described as a 'hissy fit' when she was told she couldn't take 23 suitcases with her when fleeing from occupied France into Spain. She comes across as anti-Semitic, arrogant, spoilt and very rude. Auden, who married Mann's oldest daughter Erika, is similarly portrayed unsympathetically although his spoof of Virginia Woolf's work is spot on and very funny. Others who make an appearance include Einstein, Mahler, Schoenberg and Isherwood. It is a fascinating look at the society of that time. Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.

I’ve never read a Thomas Mann novel, worrying that I’d find his work too serious, stodgy and old-white-blokish, so I’m not sure why I decided to read a lightly fictionalised biography of him instead.

Unfortunately, but perhaps unsurprisingly, I found The Magician to be too serious, stodgy and old-white-blokish for me. Mann spends the novel being distant, leering over very young men and failing to take much of a stand against the Nazis. He seems much more preoccupied with his social position and reputation than doing the right thing and I didn’t warm to him at all.

A book for Mann fans only.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

The moment I started this I wondered .. would my impression of the personal thomas mann coincide with the character in the novel .. and I immediately learned so much more abt the flavour and color of his background .. like Toibin and many other avid readers, I form pictures in my mind of writers I'm fascinated by .. I love the gossip .. to have it here laid out in novel form is sensational and I love it.. thank you mr toibin for taking effort and time to perform this exercise .. even more compelling than earlier book, The Master (about Henry James) ... this approach is transparently more accurate than usual biographies .. personal taste of biographer is revealed too.

Thomas Mann was a celebrated German author living through the incredible events of the 20th century.

This fictional account based on his life explores his early life and relationships with his family, his sexuality, politics, his creative processes, love and loss.

It’s hugely engaging and really brings the history of the time to life. The struggles Thomas has with his view of Germany are raw and powerful, as are his battles with his sexual desires.

A really insightful read, I recommend.

The Magician is an intimate, astonishingly complex portrait of legendary German author Thomas Mann (1875-1955), his formative years, his magnificent wife Katia, and the times in which they lived—the first world war, the rise of Hitler, World War II, the Cold War and, eventually, exile. When the Great War breaks out in 1914 Thomas Mann, like so many of his fellow countrymen, is fired up with patriotism. He imagines the Germany of great literature and music, that had drawn him away from the stifling, conservative town of his childhood, might be a source of pride once again. But his flawed vision will form the beginning of a dark and complex relationship with his homeland, and see the start of great conflict within his own brilliant and troubled family. This epic fictionalised biography is the story of a man of intense contradictions. Mann grew up in the tight-knit, judgemental town of Lübeck in 1891 with a conservative father, who was a senator and grain merchant, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, Julia, alluring and unpredictable.

Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations and his lack of interest in the family business from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with the Pringshelm family, one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich and marries their intelligent and fascinating daughter Katia. They have six wonderful children creating a busy, chaotic and ever-bustling home life. On a holiday in Italy, Mann longs for a boy he sees on a beach and is inspired to write the story Death in Venice in which his secret desires and suppressed feelings appear threaded. He is the most successful novelist of his time, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, a public man whose private life remains secret. He is expected to lead the condemnation of Hitler, whom he underestimates. His oldest daughter and son, leaders of Bohemianism and of the anti-Nazi movement, share lovers. He flees Germany for Switzerland, France and, ultimately, America, living first in Princeton and then in Los Angeles. Although Thomas Mann becomes immensely famous and hugely admired, his inner life is hesitant, fearful and secretive.

His blindness to impending disaster in the Great War will force him to rethink his relationship with Germany as Hitler comes to power. He and Katia deal with exile bravely, doing everything possible to keep the family safe, yet they also suffer the terrible ravages of suicide among Thomas's siblings and their own children. The Magician is a captivating, dazzling and hugely ambitious novel fusing extensive research with great imagination and setting it against the backdrop of tumultuous early 20th century Europe. It's beautifully written and Toibin manages to tell a sprawling tale of the political, social and economic turmoil of the era and juxtapose it against Mann's intimate personal tribulations and family struggles. It's a profoundly moving piece that uses Mann's life to paint a stunning character portrait of a man who was complex, flawed and torn between the immense love he held for his family and his true nature and gay identity. It also contains fascinating sections about interwar Germany: the inflation, the growing discontent, the chaos, but also the artistic and sexual freedom that Mann's children Erika and Klaus experienced and lived out. Highly recommended.

This book can’t help being an epic given that it spans over both World Wars and portrays Thomas Mann and his family with their many connections to some of the most famous players in the art world of their time. It covers some 60 years of Thomas Mann’s life and that of his rather extravagant family.

This is Tóibín’s second fictional account of the life of a great writer, following his portrayal of Henry James in The Master, published in 2004. In both cases he chose novelists not exactly known for writing easy prose. Tóibín’s own writing however seems effortless and straightforward. His attempts to get into Thomas Mann’s mind and to provide a substantial context to his literary work is likely to make Mann’s novels more accessible to those readers who have so far been put off by Mann’s elaborate style of writing. I certainly will give him another go.

I loved immersing myself in Mann’s world as imagined by Tóibín - it was so rich with regard to historical context, literary exploration and in its portrayal of the life of a truly extraordinary family. Tóibín depicts the marriage of Thomas Mann with Katia Pringsheim as the very special relationship it really was. Mann’s ambivalent bond with his parents, siblings and his children is ever so well illustrated and, in the end, it does not come as a surprise to the reader, that whilst Mann’s humanity is widely recognised and lauded, his children did not share these feelings. To them he was the Magician - powerful, omnipotent and occasionally mysterious with a single focus on his work and status, but lacking the kind of unconditional love that might have threatened his sense of self-importance and loosened his focus on his own interests.

Tóibín also explores Mann’s sexuality and his homoerotic tendencies that found their expression in so many of his literary figures, his political positioning which was complex and always related to his sense of self-protection, and his creative writing process. Tóibín seemingly effortlessly slips into the Magician’s mind, attempting to see the world through his eyes.

I enjoyed this book and found the way how the most intimate stories of Thomas Mann are woven into world history interesting, insightful and indeed brave. If this captures your imagination, then you might also be interested in Heinrich Breloer’s Emmy-winning production Die Manns – Ein Jahrhundertroman (2001, available with English subtitles), which compliments Tóibín’s account of the life of one of the most accomplished German novelists in the 20th century.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Viking for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Colm Toibin has undertaken a great deal of research into the life of the author Thomas Mann largely through his surviving diaries and has written another captivating novel. He has captured key episodes in his life which reveals the development of the man and his art as well as the history of Germany spanning both world wars. The Mann family had a complex, fascinating and at times tragic dynamic. Colm Toibin has chosen to call the novel The Magician to reflect the focus on the private man and his immediate relationships with his wife and children. Outside of their family bubble the rise of the Nazi party slowly builds throughout the novel as does Thomas Mann’s dissent against it from his displacement in Switzerland and in the USA. An engrossing story and highly recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Viking for a review copy.

This is my favourite Colm Tobin book to date. An epic fictional saga on the life of Tomas Mann and his family. I spent a week lost in this story spanning decades and continents. All of the characters were intriguing and made me want to know more about each of their own life stories. The relationship with Thomas and Katia is fascinating. A wonderful book and I was sorry to finish it.

This is a fictional biography of German novelist Thomas Mann, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1929.

This long detailed history of a man and his family during the first half of the 20th Century is finely researched and written in a way which brings the people and the story to life. Obviously Toibin had to keep to the facts so sometimes the narrative is a little dense. That said, this is a stunning read and worth the time commitment.

The Magician is a stunning, sweeping epic of a novel. It is a fictionalised, but meticulously researched, account of the life of Thomas Mann, his wife Katia, their extended family and six children. The book spans a huge period of change and devastation for Germany from 1891 to the 1950s. Mann wasn’t actively involved in either war so we see the action from the position of a bystander, a commentator and an exile. There are so many aspects to Mann and his life and Colm Toibin manages to bring them all together so we can try to understand the man.
Mann was gay, though he never fully acted on his desires. His frustration shines through his writing and diaries, the terror that the Nazis would find his diaries and his account of how they were smuggled out of Germany is fascinating.
As a writer and as an exile it took him a long time to make his feelings felt about the war and he often bowed to the requests of his host country, particularly America. As he aged he grew braver, but he had to see his children and family fight battles that he felt he couldn’t.
This is a truly fascinating book about a writer that I knew little about or understood the importance of. This beautiful novel truly captures his life and this incredibly important period of history.
Thank you to #netgalley and #penguinbooks for allowing me to review this ARC

Finally got to the end of this book, bit of a slog at times, didn’t think I’d make it. But finish it I had to do simply to find out how everyone finished up. This is a fictionalised account of the German author Thomas Mann beginning with his family life in Lübreak, Germany and ending in that same but war torn city as he receives the freedom of the city. In between we visit Italy, Switzerland, Princeton, California and back to Switzerland with the backdrop of world wars, fascism and anti communism. But at the heart of this story is a wonderfully eclectic, tragic but caring family. All supported by a plethora of characters each one of whom add tremendously to the overall story. My only real issue with this novel is why make it a fictionalised account? Can any amount of research really allow you to get into the head of another person especially one that appears as complex as Thomas Mann? I could never quite marry the Mann in this novel with the status he was described as having achieved. He didn’t seem capable of writing any book never mind ones that warranted a Nobel prize. The real gem in the novel is his wife Katia and I’d have loved to get the whole story from her viewpoint. Certainly glad I did finish this and have no doubt I will miss the Mann family over the next view days. Thank you Colm Toibin for bringing them into my life.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC.

I’ll admit I’ve probably only read Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice because of my fixation with the city – I too have been ‘confronted by beauty and … animated by desire’. Its claustrophobic tale of obsession and desperation has stayed with me, so I was interested to learn that it was inspired by a real encounter Mann had on the Lido with a beautiful Polish boy. Of course I was attracted by the cover of The Magician but in truth it’s a little misleading as little time is spent in Venice. That is no great loss, though, as wherever Mann does find himself, be it Germany or Switzerland or the US, this is a compelling book.
There’s a frisson to reading fictionalised accounts of real people – what exactly is known and true, what has been pressed into the gaps in the record? I knew nothing of Mann’s life before I read The Magician and I’m glad that’s the case – I was able to take in each event in the story as if it were a fully fictional account (I resisted finding out more until I had finished the book, not wanting to break the spell, but now have a lot of rabbit holes to venture down). And what events! If even half the things that happened in Mann’s life had been invented by a novelist, you’d say it was far-fetched. While it mainly concentrates on Mann’s family, the cast list of peripheral characters is insane: Mahler, Wagner, Einstein, Brecht, Auden, Isherwood. Colm Tóibín’s depiction of Mann’s early life hits hard – I found the coldness of his father’s actions pretty shocking.
I’ve read House of Names and The Testament of Mary and have come to the conclusion that whatever premise or subject Tóibín uses, the novel is straight-up interesting, good writing in and of itself. The Magician is a gripping portrait of an extraordinary extended family, set against the changing face of Germany. I highly recommend it.