Bluebeard's Chamber: Guilt and Confession in Thomas Mann

Over the last twenty years, much critical discussion of Thomas Mann has highlighted his homosexuality. This not only is presented as a dynamic underlying Mann’s creative work, but also is the supposed reason for the theme of guilt and redemption that grew ever stronger in Mann’s fiction, and for his panic in 1933 that his early diaries would fall into the hands of the Nazis.

Michael Maar mounts a devastating forensic challenge to this consensus: Mann was remarkably open about his sexual ori...