The Magician cover art

The Magician

Winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize

Preview
Free with 30-day trial
Prime logo New to Audible Prime Member exclusive:
2 credits with free trial
1 credit a month to use on any title to download and keep
Listen to anything from the Plus Catalogue—thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and audiobooks
Download titles to your library and listen offline
₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

The Magician

Written by: Colm Tóibín
Narrated by: Gunnar Cauthery
Free with 30-day trial

₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for ₹1,093.00

Buy Now for ₹1,093.00

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2022
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2022

From one of our greatest living writers comes a sweeping novel of unrequited love and exile, war and family.

The Magician tells the story of Thomas Mann, whose life was filled with great acclaim and contradiction. He would find himself on the wrong side of history in the First World War, cheerleading the German army, but have a clear vision of the future in the second, anticipating the horrors of Nazism.

He would have six children and keep his homosexuality hidden; he was a man forever connected to his family and yet bore witness to the ravages of suicide. He would write some of the greatest works of European literature, and win the Nobel Prize, but would never return to the country that inspired his creativity.

Through one life, Colm Tóibín tells the breathtaking story of the twentieth century.
___________________________________

'As with everything Colm Tóibín sets his masterful hand to, The Magician is a great imaginative achievement -- immensely readable, erudite, worldly and knowing, and fully realized' - Richard Ford

'No living novelist dramatizes artistic creation as profoundly, as luminously, as Colm Tóibín . . . reading him is among the deepest pleasures our literature can offer' - Garth Greenwell

'This is not just a whole life in a novel, it's a whole world' - Katharina Volckmer

© Colm Tóibín 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

20th Century Biographical Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Literary Fiction World War I

Critic Reviews

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 Tóibín has fashioned an epic
I love everything Colm Tóibín has written and The Magician is another masterpiece . . . Historical fiction at its best (Nicola Sturgeon)
Sumptuous and satisfying
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)
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)
Taking on Thomas Mann is no easy task, but Tóibín's fictional account of the inner life of the great German novelist is masterful (Frederick Studemann)
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
In a novel of many moods, its every page rings true
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
Both epic and intimate, The Magician is most successful in its moving portrait of three generations of sprawling, loving, fractious family life . . . a triumph
All stars
Most relevant
the plot was interesting and the reader was superb. it was a very enjoyable experience

excellent performance

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.