Autorentext

Iain Galbraith studied Modern Languages and Comparative Literature at the universities of Cambridge, Freiburg and Mainz. He has published volumes of poetry and short prose and has translated poetry, fiction and plays from German into English and vice versa, including work by John Burnside, Reinhard Jirgl, Alice Oswald, Natascha Wodin, Esther Kinsky, Enda Walsh, Jan Wagner, Esther Dischereit, W. G. Sebald, Ulrike Draesner and Peter Handke. He has received numerous awards for translation, including the Stephen Spender Prize, the Schlegel-Tieck Prize and the Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize.

Ritchie Robertson retired in 2021 as Schwarz-Taylor Professor of German at the University of Oxford. He is now an Emeritus Fellow of the Queen's College. His many books include Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature (1985), The Enlightenment: The Pursiuit of Happiness, 1680-1790 (2020) and German Political Tragedy: The Machiavellian Plot and the Necessary Crime (2024), as well as books on Kafka and Goethe in OUP's Very Short Introductions series. Since 2004, he has been a Fellow of the British Academy.

Klappentext

Thomas Mann's later short stories published between 1925 and 1953 explore his abiding interest in human nature and his surroundings. Disorder and Early Sorrow and Mario and the Magician originate from Mann's own experiences: domestic life at the height of inflation under the early Weimar Republic; and a symbolic encounter with Fascism during an Italian holiday. The Transposed Heads: An Indian Legend is tongue-in-cheek legend set in ancient times and The Law is a subtly ironic narrative about Moses and the Ten Commandments, after which Mann returns to 1920s Germany with The Black Swan, a story of an aging woman's passion for a young American, confronting the taboo subject of cancer.

The stories illustrate Mann's progression from domestic realism to an elaborate 'late style' with mythic overtones. This collection shows the continuing literary development of one of Europe's most important writers.

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Inhalt

• Introduction

• Note on the Translation

• Select Bibliography

• Chronology on Thomas Mann

• Later Short Stories

• Explanatory Notes