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 Toibin has fashioned
an epic * Guardian *
I love everything Colm Toibin has written and
The Magician is
another masterpiece . . .
Historical fiction at its best -- Nicola Sturgeon * 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 -- Melvyn Bragg * 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 -- Fintan O'Toole * New Statesman, Books of the Year *
Taking on Thomas Mann is no easy task, but Toibin's fictional account of the inner life of the great German novelist is
masterful -- Frederick Studemann * 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 -- Justine Jordan * 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 Toibin sets his masterful hand to,
The Magician is a great imaginative achievement --
immensely readable, erudite, worldly and knowing, and fully realized -- Richard Ford
Colm Toibin 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 Toibin, 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 Yo