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The prize-winning author Colm T\xf3ib\xedn recreates the life and work of one of Germany\u2019s most famous and acclaimed writers Thomas Mann. The Magician is a deeply intimate portrait of a private man, revealing both his suppressed homosexuality and complex family ties, and of a public writer who sought to explicate the soul of Germany in the 20th century.

When Hitler came to power Thomas Mann fled his homeland and went into exile in America, and in Switzerland, never to return to live in the country that inspired his creativity. Karen Leeder, Professor of Modern German Literature at Oxford, considers how German writers have become embroiled in the major events of history, and the impact on their writing. She has translated the lectures of the poet Durs Gr\xfcnbein, For the Dying Calves, to be published in November.

Mann\u2019s novel Buddenbrooks, which earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature, is the story of the decline of a wealthy bourgeois merchant family. As a family saga it\u2019s been likened to Jesse Armstrong\u2019s 21st century creation, Succession. As the television drama reaches its third series Armstrong explains why the back-stabbing, power-grabbing antics of a superrich, dysfunctional family has so caught the public imagination.

Producer: Katy Hickman