A summer resort in Bavaria, 1918: Thomas Mann’s family has rented a house on Lake Tegernsee and is looking forward to a few carefree months. But the world is changing dramatically, and soon the writer himself will also be a different person.
The children swim and fish; the father rows, goes for walks, and scales a mountain for the first time; the mother takes care of the new baby; and Bashan, the dog, dozes in the shade while Thomas Mann is busy making him the hero of his story A Man and His Dog.
A rural idyll, but the writer is plagued by worries. Germany’s defeat in World War I is imminent, revolution is in the air, and Thomas Mann is on the wrong side of history with his anti-democratic manifesto Observations of an Unpolitical Man. He and his brother Heinrich have had a falling out over this, he can’t find the energy to work on his next great work, The Magic Mountain, and then, on top of everything else, one of his teeth falls out.
With warmth and humor, Kerstin Holzer tells the story of a very special summer in the life of the Nobel Prize-winning writer, about his fears and longings. A lighthearted story about the courage to change and the power of love.
