I think it's very important going back to but i think it's happy allso with henry james, for example. The fact that he is now known to have been more or less, let's say, homosexual, makes some of the novels about sexual secrecy into much more interesting books if you read them that way. He never let bno in any way. A tone o tha's one of the great strength for me, is that you can have people say the opposite. You have scenes which ar about things other than at which they appear to be about. I think that’s one of the obviously, the novel, i guess, is the pre eminent form for hearing
The prize-winning author Colm Tóibín recreates the life and work of one of Germany’s most famous and acclaimed writers Thomas Mann. The Magician is a deeply intimate portrait of a private man, revealing both his suppressed homosexuality and complex family ties, and of a public writer who sought to explicate the soul of Germany in the 20th century.
When Hitler came to power Thomas Mann fled his homeland and went into exile in America, and in Switzerland, never to return to live in the country that inspired his creativity. Karen Leeder, Professor of Modern German Literature at Oxford, considers how German writers have become embroiled in the major events of history, and the impact on their writing. She has translated the lectures of the poet Durs Grünbein, For the Dying Calves, to be published in November.
Mann’s novel Buddenbrooks, which earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature, is the story of the decline of a wealthy bourgeois merchant family. As a family saga it’s been likened to Jesse Armstrong’s 21st century creation, Succession. As the television drama reaches its third series Armstrong explains why the back-stabbing, power-grabbing antics of a superrich, dysfunctional family has so caught the public imagination.
Producer: Katy Hickman