A sublime and expansive biographical novel about repressed sexuality, family, literature, war and exile by one of our greatest living writers, Colm Tóibín. The Magician portrays the life of Thomas Mann, the 1929 Nobel Prize-winning German author of Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain. Mann fathered six children, keeping his homosexuality secret. His writing brought him prestige, but in Germany’s shifting political climate, scorn and derision, too. As the Nazi party rose to power, the threat to him and his loved ones became clear, and he took refuge in Switzerland and then the United States. A dexterous, virtuosic triumph that deserves to win literary prizes. Out now