Michael Maar Book order

The exploration of Thomas Mann's sexuality reveals a complex interplay of themes in his work, particularly regarding guilt and violence. Michael Maar challenges the prevailing notion that Mann's homosexuality was a source of shame, arguing instead that Mann embraced his identity. He delves into the significant events of Mann's youth, especially a transformative experience in Naples, which instilled a lasting sense of guilt. This investigation not only reassesses Mann's creative motivations but also connects his sexual orientation to deeper psychological and thematic currents in his literature.

On the eve of the controversial, posthumous publication of The Original of Laura, Michael Maar follows his critically acclaimed The Two Lolitas with a revealing new perspective on Vladimir Nabokov's life and work. Hunting down long-hidden clues in the novels, and using the themes that run through Nabokov s fiction to illuminate the life that produced them, Maar constructs a compelling psychological and philosophical portrait. Characteristically graceful and engaging, Speak, Nabokov offers a vital new perspective on the twentieth- century master.

A leading German scholar reveals his astonishing discovery about Nabokov’s influential novel We know the girl and her story, just as we know the title. But the author was Heinz von Eschwege, whose tale of Lolita appeared in 1916 under the pen name Heinz von Lichberg, forty years before Nabokov’s celebrated novel took the world by storm. Von Lichberg later became a prominent journalist in the Nazi era, and his youthful work faded from view. The Two Lolitas uncovers a remarkable series of parallels between the two works and their authors—too many for coincidence. With an introduction by best-selling German novelist Daniel Kehlmann, Maar’s extraordinary literary detective story casts new light on the making of one of the most influential works of the twentieth century. This new edition includes an interview with the author, conducted by Kehlmann, in which Maar reveals that since writing the book he has discovered what might be the final piece of the puzzle.

Over the last twenty years, much critical discussion of Thomas Mann has highlighted his homosexuality. This not only is presented as a dynamic underlying Mann’s creative work, but also is the supposed reason for the theme of guilt and redemption that grew ever stronger in Mann’s fiction, and for his panic in 1933 that his early diaries would fall into the hands of the Nazis.Michael Maar mounts a devastating forensic challenge to this Mann was remarkably open about his sexual orientation, which he saw as no reason for guilt. But sexuality in Mann’s work is inextricably bound up with an eruption of violence. Maar pursues this trail through Mann’s writings and traces its origins back to Mann’s second visit to Italy, during which the Devil appeared to him in Palestrina. Something happened to the twenty-one-year-old Thomas Mann in Naples that marked him for life with a burdensome sense of guilt...but what exactly was it?