Awards

• Winner of DAAD/GSA Book Prize for the Best Book in Germanistik and Cultural Studies 2020 (United States)

Overview

In Thomas Mann's War, Tobias Boes traces how the acclaimed and bestselling author became one of America's most prominent anti-fascists and the spokesperson for a German cultural ideal that Nazism had perverted. Thomas Mann, winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize in literature and author of such world-renowned novels as Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, began his self-imposed exile in the United States in 1938, having fled his native Germany in the wake of Nazi persecution and public burnings of his books. Mann embraced his role as a public intellectual, deftly using his literary reputation and his connections in an increasingly global publishing industry to refute Nazi propaganda. As Boes shows, Mann undertook successful lecture tours of the country and penned widely-read articles that alerted US audiences and readers to the dangers of complacency in the face of Nazism's existential threat. Spanning four decades, from the eve of World War I, when Mann was first translated into English, to 1952, the year in which he left an America increasingly disfigured by McCarthyism, Boes establishes Mann as a significant figure in the wartime global republic of letters.

Full Product Details

9781501744990

Table of Contents

Reviews

This brilliantly conceived study is a timely reminder of Thomas Mann as a writer of international consequence. Tobias Boes makes the bold and utterly convincing case that the German Nobel laureate produced a pioneering paradigm for a growing number of contemporary authors the world over, severed from their native cultural communities, have had to reinvent themselves. -- Hans Rudolf Vaget, Smith College Thomas Mann's War is a beautiful and erudite book based on new international archival research. It creatively connects Thomas Mann's politics in American exile with the media politics of his time. By exploring issues such as practices of lecturing, translation or publication, it uncovers the ways Mann was reinvented politically and aesthetically as a writer. -- Veronika Fuechtner, Dartmouth College, author of <I>Berlin Psychoanalytic</I>

Thomas Mann's War is a beautiful and erudite book based on new international archival research. It creatively connects Thomas Mann's politics in American exile with the media politics of his time. By exploring issues such as practices of lecturing, translation or publication, it uncovers the ways Mann was reinvented politically and aesthetically as a writer. -- Veronika Fuechtner, Dartmouth College, author of <I>Berlin Psychoanalytic</I>

Thomas Mann's War is a beautiful and erudite book based on new international archival research. It creatively connects Thomas Mann's politics in American exile with the media politics of his time. By exploring issues such as practices of lecturing, translation or publication, it uncovers the ways Mann was reinvented politically and aesthetically as a writer. -- Veronika Fuechtner, Dartmouth College, author of <I>Berlin Psychoanalytic</I> This brilliantly conceived study is a timely reminder of Thomas Mann as a writer of international consequence. Tobias Boes makes the bold and utterly convincing case that the German Nobel laureate produced a pioneering paradigm for a growing number of contemporary authors the world over, severed from their native cultural communities, have had to reinvent themselves. -- Hans Rudolf Vaget, Smith College

Boes's superb account is based on extensive archival research, including Mann's personal letters, as well as keen assessments of his novels. * The National Interest * Boes's exhaustive, meticulous survey should come to represent an exemplar for scholarship seeking to document the lasting significance of an author's work. * Publishers Weekly * Thomas Mann's War is important and timely. It is a reminder that literature is one of the first things to come under attack when authoritarianism takes hold, something for which there is ample evidence in our present moment, from China to Russia, from Turkey to Saudi Arabia. * The Wall Street Journal *

Author Information

Tobias Boes is Associate Professor of German at the University of Notre Dame. He is author of Formative Fictions. Follow him on X @tobiasboes.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available