The Master of Contradictions: Thomas Mann and the Making of The Magic Mountain [Hardcover]

The arresting story of how Thomas Mann wroteThe Magic Mountainas a defeated Germany descended into political chaos

Jensen brings to the subject the breadth of knowledge and the critical insight it demands, while maintaining a clear style and quick pace. The combination makesThe Master of Contradictionsthe rare work of literary criticism with real appeal for the common reader.Adam Kirsch,New York Review of Books

Like many writers of his generation, Thomas Mann (18751955) welcomed the outbreak of the First World War. He viewed it as a spiritual necessity, a chance to reassert German cultural dominance over Western ideas of democracy and enlightenment. Then, in 1924, he publishedThe Magic Mountain, a massive novel that culminates in the slaughter of war and foreshadows the Nazi terror to come. One of the central achievements of modernism,The Magic Mountainbears testimony to its authors dramatic political reorientation as a defender of democracy.
 
This poignant book is a biography of Manns great novelits evolution from a short story into a two-volume masterpiece and one of the bestselling novels of the Weimar era. Deftly weaving together elements of biography, history, and literary criticism, Morten H?i Jensen reveals how writingThe Magic Mountainagainst a backdrop of world war, revolution, hyperinflation, and rising right-wing terror moved Mann to embrace the democratic and humanistic ideas he once scorned.
 
One hundred years afterThe Magic Mountainwas first published, at a time when democratic ideas are again under threat, Jensen reveals the universality and timeliness of Manns great novelits still-resonant debates over democracy and tyranny, time and place, illness and death.