Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man by Thomas Mann

Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man by Thomas Mann

A classic, controversial book exploring German culture and identity by the author of Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain, now back in print.

When the Great War broke out in August 1914, Thomas Mann, like so many people on both sides of the conflict, was exhilarated. Finally, the era of decadence that he had anatomized in Death in Venice had come to an end; finally, there was a cause worth fighting and even dying for, or, at least when it came to Mann himself, writing about. Mann dropped the short story he was working on in order to compose a full-throated paean to the German cause. Soon after, his elder brother and lifelong rival, the novelist Heinrich Mann, responded with a no less withering denunciation. Thomas took it as an almost unforgivable stab in the back.

The bitter dispute between the brothers would swell into the strange, tortured literary monument that is Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, a book that is as blind as it is troubled and full of curious insight. Mann worked on it and added to it throughout the war years, publishing it only when German defeat was inevitable, and these reflections are in a sense a first draft for his later explorations of German destiny in The Magic Mountain and Doktor Faustus. His effort to hold on to a notion of common good that lies beyond politics in the face of growing and inconceivable political disaster is all the more thought-provoking for being fatally flawed.

The NYRB Classics edition includes these two additional essays by Mann: Thoughts in Wartime (1914), translated by Mark Lilla and Cosima Mattner; and On the German Republic (1922) translated by Lawrence Rainey.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780804464826
ISBN 10	0804464820
Titel	Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man
Autor	Thomas Mann
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Paperback
Verlag	Frederick Ungar
Erscheinungsjahr	1985-09-01
Seitenanzahl	208
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.