In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain

"“Andrea Weiss proves here that complex life forms can thrive in the dark. In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain illuminates not only its primary subjects, Erika and Klaus Mann, but also the father who overshadowed them. A brilliant and important work of historical and literary portraiture.” -- David Hajdu, author of The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America “Weiss has got hold of an intrinsically dramatic story, and she tells it well. The dual lives of Thomas Mann’s eldest children combine homosexuality, political conflict, and the unfathomable burden of being the offspring of Germany’s greatest living writer. The chief merit of Weiss’s lively rendering of this story is the way she links the fates of Mann’s progeny not only to one another but to many of the major figures of European culture. Hence her book also tells us a great deal about the lives of anti-fascist intellectuals and artists in the Nazi era.” -- ­Paul Robinson, author of Gay Lives: Homosexual Autobiography from John Addington Symonds to Paul Monette ""Theirs is a fascinating tale. Outside the pages of the Manns' own memoirs and essays, or Klaus's deeply personal fiction, it's hard to imagine it more sympathetically told."" -- Ian Brunskill * Times (UK) * ""A fascinating glimpse into the two Manns' eventful and celebrity-filled lives."" * Gay & Lesbian Review * ""The scene was set, the drama a tragedy. Klaus's lifelong attempt to win his father's approval--or die trying, which he did--was a campaign complicated and harried by cataclysmic world events brought masterfully into play by Weiss, and summed up on one word: Hitler."" -- Kathy Hunt * The Australian * ""If you've ever dreamed of entering the elite literary circles of André Gide, Bertolt Brecht, Christopher Isherwood, and Carson McCullers, here's your passport."" -- ""Best of Summer Reading"" * The Advocate *"