Biographies and Publications – Nino Ricci and Thomas Mann

Nino Ricci

Born 1959 in Learnington, Ontario, to Italian parents.
 
1980s
Ricci studies in Toronto, Montreal and Florence, Italy.

1990
His first novel, Lives of the Saints, becomes an international bestseller and is translated into 10 other languages. First in a trilogy, the novel wins the Governor General’s Award and the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award.

1990–1996
Ricci serves as one of the directors of PEN Canada and 1995/96 as president of PEN Canada.

1993
His second novel, In a Glass House, is published.

1997
His third novel, Where She Has Gone, is the final part of Ricci’s Vittorio Innocente trilogy and gets nominated for the Giller Price.

2002
Testament, his first historical novel, a retelling of the life of Jesus by Judas Iscariot, Mary Magdalene, Blessed Virgin Mary and Simon, is published and gets shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize Carribean/Canada and named a Vancouver Sun Book of the Year.

2004
Lives of the Saints gets adapted as a Canadian-Italian TV mini-series starring Sophia Loren, Nick Mancuso and Kris Kristofferson.

2007
The Goethe-Institut Toronto connects Ricci with German author Thomas Medicus to talk about national identities and European family secrets after the war. Exploring the family relations in a small rural Italian village in the 1950s, Ricci’s first three novels form a trilogy with a strong focus on Germany and Italy in World War II and the post-war repercussions for Italian immigrants in Canada.

2008
The novel The Origin of Species, a national bestseller, earns Ricci the Canadian Authors Association Fiction Award as well as his second Governor General’s Award for Fiction.

2009
As part of Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians series, Nino Ricci publishes a biography of Pierre Elliot Trudeau. The Origin of Species is nominated for the Trillium Book Award.

2011
He was appointed a member of the Order of Canada. 

2015
His most recent novel, Sleep, wins Ricci his second Canadian Authors Award for Fiction and is a Toronto Star Top 5 Book for 2015 as well as a Globe and Mail and National Post Best Book.

Ricci has been a recipient of the Alistair MacLeod Award for Literary Achievement, of York University’s Pinnacle Achievement Award, of the Engel/Findley Award for a Writer in Mid-Career, and of an honorary doctorate from the University of Windsor.

Nino Ricci is married to novelist Erika de Vasconcelos and lives in Toronto.

Thomas Mann

Born 1875 in Lübeck, Germany, into a prosperous and cultured merchant dynasty.
 
 
1891
Mann’s father dies of cancer and the family estate is liquidated.

1894
Mann’s mother moves the family to Munich.

1897
His first short story collection, Little Herr Friedemann, is published.

1898–1900
Works as co-editor for the satirical news magazine Simplicissimus.

1901
His first novel, Buddenbrooks, is published. A cheaper second edition, published in 1903, unexpectedly turns the book into a national bestseller.

1903
His novella Tonio Kröger – widely regarded as his most personal and autobiographical work – is published.

1905
Marries Katja Pringsheim, daughter of a wealthy and intellectual Jewish family. The couple has six children.

1911
Writes his short story Felix Krull, that only gets published in 1922 and later expanded into his final novel, Confessions of Felix Krull, published in 1954.

1912
His novella Death in Venice is published.

1914–18
Strongly in favour of the war, he ceases to talk to his older brother Heinrich, an outspoken pacifist, and a famous author himself.

1924
His novel The Magic Mountain is published.

1929
His novella Mario and the Magician is published.

For his first novel, Buddenbrooks, Mann is awarded the Nobel Prize. His more recent and very successful novel The Magic Mountain at the same time is panned by the committee and notably excluded from their decision to award him.

1933–1944
His tetralogy Joseph and His Brothers is published.

Following the Nazi takeover, the family lives in exile in Zürich.

1938
In an essay for the New York Times, he famously notes: Where I am, there is Germany. I carry my German culture in me. I have contact with the world and I do not consider myself fallen.

1939
The family emigrates to the US where Mann is appointed Visiting Professor at Princeton University.

His novel Lotte in Weimar is published at a Stockholm exile press.

1941
The family settles in Pacific Palisades, California.

1947
His novel Doctor Faustus is published.

1949
First visit to post-war Germany.

1952
Moves back to Switzerland.

1955
Dies from a rupture in his leg.