Royal Highness

Rating:
Summary: Not for the Mann novice, but a great book.
Review: Thomas Mann is an excellent author, but if you've never read anything by him before, begin with "Magic Mountain" and "Death in Venice," followed by "Buddenbrooks" and "Felix Krull" before tackling this book. This is Mann's second novel and a bit of a letdown from "Buddenbrooks." Mann uses the literary technique he would later exploit in such marvelous fashion with "Magic Mountain" -- that is, examining a small, isolated part of society as a microcosm of the larger whole, namely Europe.

Without giving away any of the surprises, this book is about a rather idealistic female's impact on a small village. Mann poses thoughtful questions about the usefulness of artistic values in a bourgeois society while revealing the inner nuances of his characters as he does so artfully, as in "Buddenbrooks" and "Felix Krull."

To top it all off, this Mann novel is probably his most humorous. For those not knowledgable on Mann, he is not readily identifyable for the humour in his works, making this one rather noteworthy.