'Termed the finest study of the mind of a dog ever written, a few boldly assert that it is no doubt one of the greatest portrayals of a man's mind' - New York Times
In Bashan and I (sometime referred to as A Man and His Dog), Thomas Mann, the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Magic Mountain and Death in Venice, writes in the most remarkable way of the unique relation that links a dog with his master. These memoirs read as a novel, and describe in fierce detail the behavior, feelings and psychology of Mann's dog Bashan, and of Mann himself. Mann tells how he acquired Bashan, details traits of his character, and describes how they go on harmless and bucolic hunts.
Written in 1918 at the end of the First World War, Bashan and I is an ode to life, to nature, to simple joys, and to a dog.
Praise
"Termed the finest study of the mind of a dog ever written, a few boldly assert that it is no doubt one of the greatest portrayals of a man's mind ... An extremely lovable story ... An enchanting classic." - New York Times
"The life of a dog is a simple and strangely marvelous thing; and that finally may be what sets Bashan and I apart: it is true to the life of a dog."-Gary Amdahl, Ruminator Review
About the author
Thomas Mann (1875-1955), author of many novels and stories, including Magic Mountain, Death in Venice, Buddenbrooks, and Doctor Faustus, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. An ardent antifascist, he left Germany in 1933 and became a U.S. citizen in 1944.
Thomas Mann (1875-1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized versions of German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer. He was only twenty-five when Buddenbrooks, his first major novel, was published in 1901. Before it was banned and burned by Hitler, it had sold over a million copies in Germany alone. His second great novel, The Magic Mountain, was published in 1924; and the first volume of his tetralogy Joseph and his Brothers in 1933. When Adolf Hitler came to power, Mann fled to Switzerland. Then, after several previous visits, in 1938 he settled in the United States, where he wrote Doctor Faustus and The Holy Sinner. Among the honours he received in the US was his appointment as a Fellow of the Library of Congress. He revisited his native country in 1949 and returned to Switzerland in 1952, where The Black Swan and Confessions of Felix Krull were written and where he died in 1955. Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur, German literature written in exile by those who opposed the Hitler regime.
