![]() ![]() Doctor Faustus is the masterwork of a writer who embodied German culture in the first half of the 20th century and a dauntingly complex novel whose execution is a testament to the author’s ability, both with words and ideas. With a plot that spans forty years and involves scores of characters, the work explores far more than the socio-political conditions leading up to World War II. ![]() Mann’s use of the Faust legend-the archetypal German literary symbol of pride, power, and progress-explores the relationship between the nation’s ideals and its position in history around 1945: did the development of German culture and tradition across the previous five hundred years necessitate the rise of the Third Reich and the nation’s own doom? Mann considered the book to be on par with Joyce’s Ulysses, with respect to its depth and richness, as well as its ability to redefine the genre of the novel itself. ![]() Built from layer upon layer of detail, the book is both a critique of modern bourgeois life in Germany and an allegory for the rise of the Nazi party. Thomas Mann’s final novel, Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, as Told by A Friend (1947), is a magnum opus as complex as it is symbolic. ![]()
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