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1335203,759 (3.71)11
As a man searching for his own identity, Magnus discovers that his life resembles a painting by Otto Dix, George Grosz or Edward Munch, rather than the romantic tale of family heroism and self-sacrifice on which he was nurtured by the woman he took to be his mother.
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English (3)  French (2)  All languages (5)
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Pris Goncourt des lyceens 2005
  TallinnBooks | Mar 20, 2023 |
“A breeze of voices, a polyphony of whisperings.”

It is the ice of one heart turning not into water but air.
It is the life of another heart turning not into death but hibernation.
A song of love dying again and again.
A song of lies, betrayals, and infidelities.
A song of flaming death, falling death, diseased death, crushing death.
It is the song of the tragedy of humanity.

“An exaltation of silence.”

The bombing of Hamburg near the end of World War II. Gomorrah. Nothing is left but parts of walls still standing, rubble, and bodies. A woman crouches with dancing flames attached to her back. They continue their wild waltz until the woman falls, the flames totally consume her, and the short macabre opera is finally over. A small child, until just recently holding her hand, now mindless with shock, continues walking. To where, he does not know.

This is the story of a child growing up in the aftermath of war, discovering the truths of his past, listening to the whisperings of ghosts, and as a young man, finding and losing love.

This novel is the closest thing to perfection that I have read in quite some time. It is Tolstoy stripped bare. It is Shakespeare put to prose. It is to observe every human emotion from within and from without. Beautiful, poetic, sad, and unique in the canon of this type of literature.

“War, or the delirium of crime raised to the level of a sacred mission.” ( )
12 vote Quixada | Oct 17, 2012 |
Magnus is a deeply moving and enigmatic novel about the Holocaust. Magnus is a man searching for his own identity, attempting to piece together the complex puzzle of his life. But his true story turns out to be closer to a painting by Edward Munch than the romantic tale of family heroism and self-sacrifice on which he was nurtured by the woman he believed was his mother. In Magnus, Sylvie Germain uses imagination and intuition to unlock the enigma of human life and confer on history the power of myth and fable.
  Cultural_Attache | Aug 4, 2018 |
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As a man searching for his own identity, Magnus discovers that his life resembles a painting by Otto Dix, George Grosz or Edward Munch, rather than the romantic tale of family heroism and self-sacrifice on which he was nurtured by the woman he took to be his mother.

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