Confessions of Felix Krull

Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years
English 1st edition
Author(s)	Thomas Mann
Original title	Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull. Der Memoiren erster Teil
Country	Germany
Language	German
Genre(s)	Novel
Publication date	1954
Published in English	1955
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	0679739041
OCLC Number	25200982
Dewey Decimal	833/.912 20
LC Classification	PT2625.A44 B313 1992

An unfinished 1954 novel by the German author Thomas Mann. It is a parody of Goethe's autobiography Poetry and Truth,^[1][2] particularly in its pompous tone.^[3] The original title is Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull. Der Memoiren, erster Teil, translated a year later in English as Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years.

Posterart for the 1957 German film adaption of the Confessions of Felix Krull, starring Horst Buchholz as Felix

Originally the character of Felix Krull appeared in a short story written in 1911. The story wasn't published until 1936, in the book Stories of Three Decades along with twenty-three other stories written between 1896 and 1929, the year in which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Much later, Mann expanded the story and managed to finish, and publish part one of the Confessions of Felix Krull, but due to his death in 1955 the saga of the morally flexible and irresistible conman, Felix, remains unfinished.

A spoken-word adaptation of chapters 1, 2, 3, and 5 from the first book (dem Buch der Kindheit) of Felix Krull performed by O. E. Hasse was included as a companion disk to the 1965 Teldec (Telefunken-Decca) release of Schwere Stunde (performed by Thomas Mann).

Notes

1. ^ Mann's Letter to Paul Amann, 3 August 1915, quotation:

   eine Parodie auf Dichtung und Wahrheit, aber positiv endlich doch in seiner verzerrten Lyrik

   translation:

   a parody of Poetry and Truth, but in the end arriving at something new in its distorted lyricism.

2. ^ Schonfield (2008) p.19
3. ^ Schwarz (2004) p.257

References

• Ernest Schonfield (2008) Art and its uses in Thomas Mann's Felix Krull
• Schwarz, Egon (2004) Felix Krull in Lehnert, Herbert and Wessell, Eva (2004) A companion to the works of Thomas Mann pp.257-269
• Mann, Thomas and Amann, Paul (1960) Letters to Paul Amann, 1915-1952