Colm Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy in 1955. He is the author of nine novels including The Master, Brooklyn, The Testament of Mary and Nora Webster and, most recently, House of Names. His work has been shortlisted for the Booker three times, won the Costa Novel Award and the Impac Award. He has also published two collections of stories and many works of non-fiction. He lives in Dublin.
This is an enormously ambitious book, one in which the intimate and
the momentous are exquisitely balanced. It is the story of a man
who spent almost all of his adult life behind a desk or going for
sedate little post-prandial walks with his wife. From this
sedentary existence Tóibín has fashioned an epic
*Guardian*
I love everything Colm Tóibín has written and The Magician is
another masterpiece . . . Historical fiction at its best
*New Statesman, Books of the Year*
Sumptuous and satisfying
*The Times, A Best Fiction Book of 2021*
The Magician, recreates as biographical fiction the life, thoughts
and achievements of Thomas Mann. It is dark, beautifully
constructed and, I think, as near as one author can get to entering
the mind of another
*New Statesman, Books of the Year*
The Magician uses the life of Thomas Mann to explore the complex
relationships between intimacy and history, public and private
lives, and the slippery nature of creativity itself. I found it
mesmerising
*New Statesman, Books of the Year*
Taking on Thomas Mann is no easy task, but Tóibín's fictional
account of the inner life of the great German novelist is
masterful
*FT, Best Books of 2021: Critics’ Picks*
The Magician is not a biography but a work of art, an emotional
reckoning with a century of change, centred on a man who tried to
stand upright but was swayed by the winds of that change
*The Times*
In a novel of many moods, its every page rings true
*Mail on Sunday*
An expansive yet deeply personal exploration of the life of exiled
German writer Thomas Mann . . . Containing beautiful observations
on life and literature, and a sweeping sense of historical scale,
The Magician remains tightly written and wryly funny
*Independent*
Both epic and intimate, The Magician is most successful in its
moving portrait of three generations of sprawling, loving,
fractious family life . . . a triumph
*Financial Times*
A triumph
*Daily Telegraph*
A sweeping overview of Thomas Mann's life
*Guardian, Best Fiction of 2021*
The Irish novelist famed for Brooklyn imagines the world of the
German Nobel-winning writer Thomas Mann and his secret desire for
handsome young men, in what the Times reviewer John Self says is
his best novel yet
*The Times, Best Books of 2021*
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*
Colm Tóibín has already written several truly extraordinary novels.
The Magician may be the very best of them
*Sunday Independent*
The Magician is a remarkable achievement. Mann himself, one feels
certain, would approve
*John Banville*
This graceful novel is a moving and intimate portrait by one master
of another . . . It is a stunning tribute to the great man, and a
vital story for now
*Anna Funder*
A masterpiece, vast and luminous . . . witty and profound and
truthful
*Tessa Hadley*
Extensively researched and lyrically wrought . . . a complex but
empathetic portrayal of a writer in a lifelong battle against his
innermost desires, his family and the tumultuous times they
endure
*Time, Best Books of Fall 2021*
No living novelist dramatizes artistic creation as profoundly, as
luminously, as Colm Tóibín, or conveys so well the entanglement of
imagination and desire . . . Reading him is among the deepest
pleasures our literature can offer
*Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You*
This is not just a whole life in a novel, it's a whole world - with
all its wonders, tragedies and sacrifices. I loved every page of
this beautiful and immersive journey into The Magician's mind
*Katharina Volckmer, author of The Appointment*
Toibin's symphonic and moving novel humanizes [Mann] . . .
Maximalist in scope but intimate in feeling
*New York Times*
Mr. Tóibín wields a dramatically stripped-down prose style . . .
epiphanies, when they come, are all the more powerful after so much
restraint . . . What Mr. Tóibín's exquisitely sensitive novel gets
right, in a way that biography rarely does, is its acknowledgement
of unknowability
*Wall Street Journal*
A haunting and heartrendingly intimate portrait of its protagonist,
the German writer Thomas Mann, and a richly drawn sense of place .
. . [a] vast and stunningly realized world . . . you'll find
yourself savouring every page
*Vogue, a Most Anticipated Book of Fall*
An incisive and witty novel that shows what good company the
Nobelist and his family might have been
*Washington Post*
It's a work of huge imaginative sympathy . . . quite thrilling . .
. it takes a writer of Tóibín's calibre to understand how the
seemingly inconsequential details of life can be transmogrified,
turned into art
*New York Times Book Review*
The hallmarks of Tóibín's diaphanous prose - stillness, precision,
intimacy- remain intact despite the wideranging, voluminous
material of Mann's biography . . . in a quietly epic tale, Tóibín
expertly captures the layers of a richly multiple self and surely
reasserts his own status as one of our greatest living
novelists
*i*
Wonderful . . . a very accomplished and enjoyable novel
*Scotsman*
Simultaneously intimate and transnational . . . this is deeply
engaging, serious and beautiful writing that carries its echoing
questions with grace
*Irish Times*
Compelling . . . Superb characterisation and sharp insights
throughout make this an immensely enjoyable novel
*Daily Mirror*
Intelligent and enthralling
*Scotsman*
The Magician, Colm Tóibín's new novel about Mann, resists the
shallow gestures of Hollywood biopics, reaching for something
mainstream film couldn't get at, or wouldn't bother with. How does
an artist create, and can a true artist live as the rest of us
do?
*Vulture*
This meticulously woven novel re-creates the life of Thomas Mann .
. . An ode to a 20th-century genius and a feat of literary sorcery
in its own right
*Oprah Magazine*
The personal and public history is compelling . . . an intriguing
view of a writer who well deserves another turn on the literary
stage
*Kirkus Reviews, starred review*
[The Magician] vibrates with the strength of Mann's visions and the
sublimity of Tóibín's mellifluous prose. Tóibín has surpassed
himself
*Publishers Weekly, starred review*
This vibrates with the strength of Mann's visions and the sublimity
of Tóibín's mellifluous prose. Tóibín has surpassed himself
*Publishing News*
Compelling . . . Tóibín succeeds in conveying his fascination with
the Magician, as his children called him, who could make sexual
secrets vanish beneath a rich surface life of family and uncommon
art . . . intriguing
*Kirkus Reviews, starred review*
Employing luxurious prose that quietly evokes the tortured soul
behind these literary masterpieces, Tóibín has an unequalled gift
for mapping the interior of genius
*Booklist, starred review*
Literary lovers will want to sink into this absorbing reimagining
of the life of the Nobel Prize-winning German writer Thomas Mann .
. . Mann family members have their own struggles - with each other
and a world where they rarely feel at home - all vividly brought to
life
*AARP*
You don't have to be a Thomas Mann fan to be gripped by the account
of his life that author Colm Tóibín delivers in his new novel . . .
[Tóibín's] his biggest triumph is in getting to the heart of Mann's
dilemma
*Seattle Times*
A celebration of what novels can do
*Observer on ‘House of Names’*
Devastatingly human . . . savage, sordid and hauntingly
believable
*Guardian on 'House of Names'*
Tremendous, richly beautiful, wonderful . . . it does everything we
ought to ask of a great novel
*Tessa Hadley, Guardian, on ‘Nora Webster’*
Subtle and enthralling
*Sunday Times, on ‘Nora Webster’*
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