Florian Illies: Wenn die Sonne untergeht

In the scorching summer of 1933, the political situation in Europe comes to a head – as does that of the Mann family: after an adventurous escape in June, Thomas and Katia Mann and their six children find themselves stranded in the idyllic Mediterranean port town of Sanary in France. And now they all find themselves unable to move forward or backward.

One place, one family, three months at thirty degrees Celsius – Florian Illies tells of the grief over the loss of home and possessions, the fear of Nazi looting, of melancholy, defiance, and passion. And of the trial of endurance between Klaus and Erika and their father.

Florian Illies, “the great storyteller” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), established a new genre with his international bestseller “1913.” This was followed by S. FISCHER’s book about the 1920s and 1930s, “Liebe in Zeiten des Hasses” (Love in Times of Hate, 2021), which has now been translated into over twenty languages, and the big No. 1 bestseller about Caspar David Friedrich’s images of longing, “Zauber der Stille” (The Magic of Silence, 2023).

Born in 1971, Florian Illies studied art history and modern history in Bonn and Oxford. He became an editor at the FAZ in 1996, was head of the arts section at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, and ran an art auction house. Today, Illies is one of the editors of Die Zeit and lives as an author in Berlin. His art podcast Augen zu (Eyes Closed, together with Giovanni di Lorenzo) is one of the most listened to podcasts in the German language.

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Boris Breuer

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