A couple of years ago a then-client (now friend) told me to read Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family, and I turned into a casual Thomas Mann fan. He’s an author who I look for at used bookstores.

This book is a fictional biography of Mann — Tóibín obviously dug deep into Mann’s legacy and history for it. It’s deep and detailed, and clearly written with a lot of care. The tragedies that the Mann family goes through feel real, and the family drama is compelling.

The true strength of the book, in my view, is the social, moral and philosophical challenges for anti-fascist Germans in the WWII era. In this book, Mann’s deep resentment of both communism and fascism are clear, but everyone around him demands he be public with his sentiments in a way that suits their agenda. He leaves Europe for America, and eventually America for Europe. He wants to visit his hometown in Germany after the war, but as part of East Germany, the political implications of it are complex and baffling. Several major historical figures are part of this story (FDR and Einstein among them).

I was worried that like so many Big Literature Books, it would be dry and alienating, or full of historical digressions with facts and characters that I’m totally unfamiliar with. But in the first 50 pages, it was clear I was wrong. The writing is formal but approachable, kind of like Amor Towles, or Julian Barnes in Arthur & George.

I don’t know how much value it is to be familiar with Mann’s work in order to enjoy this book. I’m hardly a scholar but I liked the parallels between his (imagined) real life and Mann’s stories. As a historical human drama, it likely stands on its own, and will likely inspire you to read Buddenbrooks or some of his other work.

(Read Buddenbrooks though, it’s terrific.)