Thomas Mann
Doppelgangers galore: The Novices of Lerna, by Angel Bonomini, reviewed
A graduate from Argentina, offered a six-month fellowship in Switzerland, is appalled to meet – and have to live with - 24 versions of himself
Mysteries and misogyny: The Empusium, by Olga Tokarczuk, reviewed
Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann’s masterpiece The Magic Mountain in this ‘health resort horror story’ set in a Silesian guesthouse on the eve of the first world war
Last chance saloon
Florian Illies describes the charged atmosphere of Europe in the early 1930s, as people grew increasingly desperate to celebrate their last chance of freedom
High life
Was it Socrates who said that chaos was the natural state of mankind, and tyranny the usual remedy? Actually it…
Discovering Thomas Mann by motorbike
In Thomas Mann’s astonishing novel The Magic Mountain the indolent young Hans Castorp visits his brave, terminally ill soldier cousin…
Gay tittle-tattle
The Comintern was the name given to the international communist network in the Soviet era, advancing the cause wherever it…
The Mann who knew everyone
Thomas Mann, despite strong homosexual emotions, had six children. The two eldest, Erika and Klaus, born in 1905 and 1906…
Putting Germany together again
The purpose of Lara Feigel’s book is to describe the ‘political mission of reconciliation and restoration’ in the devastated cities…
Long life
Whether or not you believe in the afterlife, death remains an impenetrable mystery. One moment a person is making jokes…
The game of consequences
No one alive now has any adult experience of the first world war, but still it shows no sign of…
Peak practice
William Cook visits the Kirchner Museum in Davos, the Alpine town where the German Expressionist found refuge and inspiration
