The Forgotten Greatest Writer of the 20th Century, Thomas Mann

Widely hailed as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, the German literary Thomas Mann (1875-1955) has been widely lost to the mainstream and has fallen into obscurity. This is a seemingly strange thing to happen to a man who in his time of the modern art movement, was just as much or more well known as his contemporaries, who have themselves proven to stand the test of time. Let us take a more recognized contemporary as a comparison. Here is the all encapsulating James Joyce, sometimes regarded as the greatest of the 20th century, the stylist, the experimentalist, the writer to get the furthest from the influence of Shakespeare in the English language. Most avid readers will admit to at least of hearing of his name at some point, although they may never have read him themselves, yet at the mention of the name Thomas Mann, there is likely to be a response in the form of a question with the word ‘who’ involved. Even I was not informed or had any knowing of his existence until my insatiable drive for useless knowledge brought me to that mysterious novel of his: ‘The Magic Mountain’. This considered to be his greatest achievement, I began to learn of the Mann and his life from that point onward, and ever since that day he has seemed to occupy my mind. When we look at his success, I found it excessively strange that within ten years of ‘The Magic Mountain’ s publication, it had sold well over a million copies in Germany alone before suffering the book burning of 1933 by the Nazi regime, yet since James Joyce’s greatest…