The Master of Contradictions by Morten Jensen

The Master of Contradictions by Morten Jensen

The arresting story of how Thomas Mann wrote The Magic Mountain as 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 makes The Master of Contradictions the 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 (1875–1955) 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 published The 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 Mountain bears testimony to its author’s dramatic political reorientation as a defender of democracy.
 
This poignant book is a biography of Mann’s great novel—its 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 Høi Jensen reveals how writing The Magic Mountain against 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 after The Magic Mountain was first published, at a time when democratic ideas are again under threat, Jensen reveals the universality and timeliness of Mann’s great novel—its still-resonant debates over democracy and tyranny, time and place, illness and death.

Morten Høi Jensen is a Danish-American writer and critic. He is the author of A Difficult Death: The Life and Work of Jens Peter Jacobsen and has contributed to numerous publications, including the Washington Post, the New York Review of Books, Commonweal, and Liberties.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780300233742
ISBN 10	0300233744
Title	The Master of Contradictions
Author	Morten Jensen
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Yale University Press
Year published	2026-01-06
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.