THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2022SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2022From 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 Tibn tells the breathtaking story of the twentieth century.As with everything Colm Tibn sets his masterful hand to The Magician is a great imaginative achievement immensely readable erudite worldly and knowing and fully realized Richard FordNo living novelist dramatizes artistic creation as profoundly as luminously as Colm Tibn . . . reading him is among the deepest pleasures our literature can offer Garth GreenwellThis is not just a whole life in a novel its a whole world Katharina Volckmer