The Magician

'As with everything Colm Tóibín sets his masterful hand to, The Magician is a great imaginative achievement - immensely readable, erudite, worldly and knowing, and fully realized.' - Richard Ford 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 cause of pride once again.