Klaus and Other Stories by Allan Massie

Allan Massie, the prolific novelist and non-fiction writer, is here revealed as a consummate master of the short story. This should not surprise, given his dense and highly effective style. Some of the short stories come from his early career, and some are the product of a recent return to the genre. 

Klaus, the novella that opens and, to some extent, dominates this collection, tells the story of Klaus Mann, son of Thomas, and in spite of the long shadow of so famous a father, an important novelist and political activist in his own right. His struggle against Nazism gave him a focus, but its demise and what he perceived as Germany’s inability to change led to depression and an early death. 

Massie succeeds in evoking that period of courage and hypocrisy, intellectual fidelity and clever changeability, sacrifice and impunity, personified by the tragic Klaus and the mercurial and indestructible Gustaf Gründgens, his former brother-in-law and ex-lover. Between these two lie not only those broken relationships but also a novel – Klaus’s novel Mephisto, a thinly disguised attack on Gründgens that for many years could not be published in West Germany. Massie’s subtle prose merely suggests some intriguing aspects of this network of relationships and the self-destructive nature of literary inspiration.

Reviews

"The tale of Klaus Mann's final days is, however, tremendously interesting, a warning and an example. Aspiring authors should read it. They'd do worse than study Massie's craftsmanship, which is evident thoughout this collection." – Colin Waters, Scottish Review of Books

"Allan Massie is a master storyteller, with a particular gift for evoking the vanishing world of the European man of letters. His poignant novella about Klaus Mann bears comparison with his subject's best work." – Daniel Johnston, editor of Standpoint