This is a fictionalised biography of Thomas Mann, the Nobel Prize winning author.
This is an article about him:
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2024/11/thomas-mann-and-the-european-disease-of-nihilism
I found the book hard to get into as I was thinking of it as a novel and not a biography. In the early pages I think he concentrates too much on Thomas's thoughts of homosexuality. It is easy to read though.
As the book goes on I find it hard to relate the things that occur to place and time, especially as the family moves from one place to another. The declaration of war sets the time once.
The part about them settling in Princeton reminds me of the book about John Von Neumann which I enjoyed.'Turings Cathedral' which was as much about John Von Neumann as Turing, it describes how Von Neumann took Turings famous paper and used it to build the first computer from which all future computers were derived. Includes all the famous people from the era of the Manhattan Project, and a couple of others like Ulam and Bigelow who were great at helping get it going. Some good quotes and comparisons in here.
1948 in Los Angeles. This is the very essence of a dis-functional family. The ending was a bit weak. He died in Switzerland.
The aspects of German culture were interesting.
Does the book make you want to learn more about Mann, or should it tie ti all up. This is a general question about biographies.
The Hare with the Amber Eyes was another story about a family in Germany during this period, but a far better story.
