内容简介

　　《魔术师》在十九、二十世纪之交德国边远小城吕贝克拉开帷幕，男孩托马斯·曼在那里成长，父亲保守，受礼教约束，母亲来自巴西，迷人而难以捉摸。年轻的曼向父亲隐瞒了他的艺术抱负，向所有人隐瞒了他的性取向。他被慕尼黑最富有、最有教养的犹太家庭吸引，娶了这家的女儿卡提娅，生了六个孩子。

　　在意大利度假时，曼对在海滩上遇见的一个男孩产生渴望，并写下《死于威尼斯》的故事。陪卡提娅在瑞士疗养时，他又迷惑于使人无法离开的高山氛围，写下《魔山》。他成为当时最成功的小说家，获得诺贝尔文学奖，人们反复期待他的政治表态。他逃离德国，前往瑞士、法国，再到达美国。他的漂泊最后结束于苏黎世以南的基尔希贝格。

　　这是一部史诗般的家庭传奇，背景跨越半个世纪，历经第一次世界大战、希特勒的崛起、第二次世界大战和冷战。托宾精心打造了一个复杂但富有同情心的作家形象，他一生都在与自己内心的欲望、家庭和他们所经历的动荡时代斗争。

　　作者简介

　　科尔姆·托宾，爱尔兰当代著名作家。他1955年生于爱尔兰韦克斯福德郡恩尼斯科西镇。毕业于都柏林大学。自1990年发表第一部小说《南方》以来，托宾已出版十部长篇小说，两部短篇小说集，一部诗集，多部戏剧、游记、散文集。《黑水灯塔船》（1999）、《大师》（2004）、《马利亚的自白》（2012）都入围布克奖决选名单，《大师》荣获2006年度都柏林国际文学奖等文学奖。《布鲁克林》获2009年度英国科斯塔最佳小说奖。《魔术师》出版于2021年9月，是他最新一部长篇小说。2011年，英国《观察家报》将其选入“英国最重要的三百位知识分子”，同年，他获得爱尔兰笔会文学奖，以表彰他对爱尔兰文学做出的贡献。2014年，他当选美国艺术与文学院外籍荣誉院士。

　　目前，托宾担任哥伦比亚大学英文与比较文学系Irene and Sidney B.Silverman人文讲席教授，自2017年起也担任利物浦大学校监。他在纽约和都柏林两地居住。

　　精彩书评

　　和科尔姆·托宾所有了不起的作品一样，《魔术师》也是一部充满想象力的杰作——好读，渊博，充满世俗烟火气，会意，完成度高。

　　——理查德·福特

　　《魔术师》是了不起的杰作。读完你会相信，曼本人也会赞同这一看法。

　　——约翰·班维尔

　　当代没有哪位小说家能像科尔姆·托宾那样深刻而优美地用小说表现艺术创作，也没有哪位小说家能像科尔姆·托宾那样很好地表现想象与欲望的纠葛……读他的作品是我们的文学能提供的最深刻的乐趣之一。

　　——加思·格林韦尔

　　这是一部雄心勃勃的作品，托马斯·曼人生中的私密部分和关键部分得到了巧妙的平衡。故事中的这个男人，成年后的所有时间几乎都在书桌旁，或是与妻子饭后散步度过。就是从这种静止的生活中，托宾塑造出一部史诗。

　　——《卫报》

　　《魔术师》不是传记，而是一部艺术作品，是对一个变革世纪的情感反思，聚焦了一个努力站稳脚跟但被变革之风吹得摇摇晃晃的人。

　　——《泰晤士报》

Content introduction

The Illusionist opens in Lubeck, a remote German town at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, where Thomas Mann grows up with a conservative, genteel father and a charming and unpredictable Brazilian mother. The young man hid his artistic ambitions from his father and his sexuality from everyone. He was attracted to Munich's richest and most educated Jewish family, married their daughter, Katya, and had six children.

While vacationing in Italy, Mann developed a longing for a boy he met on the beach and wrote the story of Dying in Venice. When he accompanied Katya to recuperate in Switzerland, he was confused by the atmosphere of the mountains that made people unable to leave and wrote the Magic Mountain. He became the most successful novelist of his time, won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and was repeatedly expected to make a political statement. He fled Germany for Switzerland, France, and then the United States. His wanderings ended in Kirchberg, south of Zurich.

It's an epic family saga set over half a century, through World War I, the rise of Hitler, World War II and the Cold War. Tobin crafted a complex but compassionate image as a writer who spent his life struggling with his inner desires, his family and the turbulent times they lived through.

About the author

Colm Tobin is a famous contemporary Irish writer. He was born in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland, in 1955. He graduated from University College Dublin. Since the publication of his first novel, The South, in 1990, Tobin has published ten novels, two collections of short stories, a collection of poems, and several plays, travelogues, and essays. "Blackwater Lighthouse Ship" (1999), "The Master" (2004), "The Confessions of Mary" (2012) were shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and "The Master" won the Dublin International Prize for Literature in 2006. Brooklyn won the 2009 Costa Award for Best British novel. The Magician, published in September 2021, is his latest novel. In 2011, the Observer named him one of Britain's Three Hundred Most important intellectuals, and in the same year he was awarded the Irish PEN Prize for Literature in recognition of his contribution to Irish literature. In 2014, he was elected an honorary Foreign Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Tobin currently holds the Irene and Sidney B. Serverman Chair in Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and has also served as Chancellor of the University of Liverpool since 2017. He splits his time between New York and Dublin.

Wonderful book review

Like all of Colm Toibin's great work, The Illusionist is a masterpiece of the imagination - easy to read, profound, full of worldly fireworks, knowing, and accomplished.

-- Richard Ford

"The Illusionist" is an amazing masterpiece. Reading it, you will believe that Mann himself would agree.

-- John Banville

No contemporary novelist can express artistic creation with novels as deeply and beautifully as Colm Toibin, and no novelist can express the entanglement of imagination and desire as well as Colm Toibin... Reading him is one of the most profound pleasures our literature can offer.

-- Garth Greenwell

This is an ambitious work, with the intimate and critical parts of Thomas Mann's life finely balanced. This is a man who has spent almost all of his adult life at a desk or walking with his wife after dinner. It was from this static life that Tobin crafted an epic.

-- The Guardian

The Magician is not a biography but a work of art, an emotional reflection on a century of change, focusing on a man who struggled to find his feet but was rocked by the winds of change.

-- The Times