Mario and the Magician: & other stories - Softcover

"The greatest German novelist of the 20th century" (Spectator)

"A monumental writer" (Sunday Telegraph)

"Mann is Germany's outstanding modern classic, a decadent representative of the tradition of Goethe and Schiller. With his famous irony, he was up there with Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Freud, holding together the modern world with a love of art and imagination to compensate for the emptiness left by social and religious collapse" (Independent)

"Probably the greatest of modern German novelists" (New York Times)

Mann’s short stories explore his abiding interest in the split nature of humanity and the discordance of the world it inhabits. In ‘A Man and his Dog’, domestic tempests are symbols of the muddle of humanity. In ‘The Black Swan’, the demands of intellect clash with physical desires. And in ‘Mario and the Magician’ a young family on holiday in Italy encounters a creepy entertainer: Cipolla, a hypnotist with a fascist-like will to control his audience.

Written between 1918 and 1953, this collection shows the literary development of one of Germany’s most important writers.