At the September 2017 meeting the German Book Club will read and discuss "Mephisto" by Klaus Mann
Hendrik Hofgen is a man obsessed with becoming a famous actor. When the Nazis come to power in Germany, he willingly renounces his Communist past and deserts his wife and mistress in order to keep on performing.
is diabolical performance as Mephistopheles in Faust proves to be the stepping-stone he yearned for: attracting the attention of Hermann Göring, it wins Hofgen an appointment as head of the State Theatre.
The rewards – the respect of the public, a castle-like villa, a uplace in Berlin's highest circles – are beyond his wildest dreams.
ut the moral consequences of his betrayals begin to haunt him, turning his dreamworld into a nightmare.
Klaus Mann -
born in Munich in 1906 as the second child of Thomas Mann - wrote MEPHISTO while living in exile from the Germany of World War II. In it he captures the decadence and evil of Nazi Germany while telling a satiric story about the rise to power of one man - a thinly veiled caricature of his own brother-in-law.
Mann left Germany in 1933 and lived in Amsterdam until 1936 having been deprived of his German citizenship by the Nazis. He moved to America in 1936, living in Princeton, New Jersey, and New York City, and became a U.S. citizen in 1943.
Publisher: Rowohlt (1981)
ISBN-10: 3499148218
ISBN-13: 978-3499148217
This meeting of the German Book Club will be moderated by Andy Vought.
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