ΚΛΑΟΥΣ ΜΑΝ: ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ

Klaus Mann: Alexander. A Novel of Utopia
A significant contribution in the formation of 20th-century German literature, this historical fantasy takes Alexander the Great for its subject, looking at his life and career, and examining his obsession with conquest and supremacy regardless of its effects on his friends and lovers. A novel that explores Klaus Manns ambiguous sexuality, it was written in 1920s Germany in the aftermath of World War I and can also be viewed as a fascinating study of power with highly political connotations.

Ένα βιβλίο που θα έπρεπε κάποτε να το δούμε μεταφρασμένο και στα ελληνικά

Those familiar with Klaus Mann's life and work will recognize thematic elements in Alexander that reappear in much of his later writing. Biographers and critics have commented on the anxiety Klaus Mann felt growing up in the overwhelming presence of his world-renowned father. This sort of paternal-filial conflict appears early on in Alexander. In his novel, Mann depicts Alexander's father, Philip of Macedonia, as something of a rube, someone easily swindled by the cultured and sophisticated Greeks. Given the obvious Oedipal dynamic, Philip is destined to be superseded by his son. By foregrounding this theme in his novel in this way, Klaus Mann was addressing this anxiety with the cheekiness that he used to pique his own father. He also stated in print that Andre Gide, not Thomas Mann, was the most important writer of their time.
Another theme running through Alexander, particularly the first half of the novel, is the ascendancy of a new generation, a youth culture, in the post-World War I era. In the novel, the younger generation sets out to rectify the mistakes of their parents. We read, for instance, that "Alexander was united in enthusiastic comradeship with his soldiers, who were as young as he. They all loved each other: all of them were no older than twenty-five." The view that the people just coming into maturity must remake a world destroyed by their parents finds expression in other of Klaus Mann's writings. In an essay titled "The War and Post-War Generation," he bemoaned the sorry state of the world and declared that with his generation "everything begins anew."
Timothy K. Nixon