Chaired by Caroline Baum

From The Heather Blazing to The Master, Colm Tóibín is acclaimed for his skill at entering the mind of the writer. In The Magician, he turns his perspicacious eye to Thomas Mann. Outwardly genteel, inwardly tormented, cautious yet impatient, suspicious of the powerful but welcomed in their homes, Colm's Mann is a writer who withdraws from a world losing its sanity but finds himself dragged back into the mess of the times. Desire, exile, family – the themes are ambitious, but in Colm's deft hands, a superbly crafted epic has emerged.