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Thomas Mann's World: Empire, Race, and the Jewish Question. By Todd Kontje. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2011. Pp. viii + 256. Cloth $70.00. ISBN 978-0472117468.
The publication of Thomas Mann's ten volumes of diaries between 1977 and 1995 created a veritable renaissance of Thomas Mann scholarship. In the mid 1990s, several voluminous studies of his life and work by German, British, and American scholars appeared, notably Hermann Kurzke, Klaus Harpprecht, Donald Prater, Ronald Hayman, Anthony Heilbut, and more recently Yahya Elsaghe. Todd Kontje's present monograph constitutes the latest endeavor by an American scholar to provide an extensive analysis of Thomas Mann's life and work, this time by focusing in particular on the problematics of racism, imperialism, and antisemitism.
Kontje's primary interest is "neither to exonerate nor to excoriate" (14) the author and his infamously shifting and changing world views, but rather to explore "his fiction in its dual role as a reflection of Thomas Mann's personal preoccupation and the expression of the conflicts of his time" (14). In eight chapters, he traces his chosen themes and their diverse developments through representative texts, including Buddenbrooks, Wälsungenblut, Royal Highness, Reflections of a...