Thomas Mann
Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man (The Early Years).
Alfred A. Knopf, 1955. First US edition. Translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter of "Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull: Der Memoiren erster Teil" (S. Fischer Verlag, 1954). 384 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.25" x 8.75", is bound in black cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine and blind-stamped stylized initials and title on front cover. Book displays very light shelfwear. Binding is solid. Interior is clean and bright. Dust jacket, with price of $4.50 on front flap, shows light shelfwear, with minor loss at top/bottom of spine panel and at outside corners of front/back panels. Jacket, designed by George Salter, is preserved in mylar cover.
"The appearance of the first part of the long and eagerly awaited full-dress "Memoirs" of the extraordinary rogue and artist, Felix Krull, is a literary event of great moment. It augurs the brilliant fulfillment of the hopes that readers of Thomas Mann everywhere have kept alive ever sine the publication of the fragment entitled "Felix Krull" of which the "Confessions" is a continuation. A rich and vastly entertaining tale in the great tradition of Cervantes and Stendahl, it reveals Mann the story-teller at his consummate best, Mann the stylist at his most ingenious and virtuosic, and Mann the critic of modern manners and morals at his most subtle and penetrating.
Widely hailed in Europe as the picaresque novel of our time, the book recounts the strange and entranced career of the gifted swindler, Felix Krull, through his childhood and early manhood. Krull is a man unhampered by the moral precepts that govern the conduct of ordinary mortals, and this natural lack of scruple, coupled with his formidable mental and physical endowments, enables him to develop the arts of subterfuge and deception with astonishing success and to rise swiftly from poverty to affluence. Following Krull along the shady paths his nature has destined him to take, the reader moves through a world peopled by bizarre characters from the lowest the highest reaches of European society. Chameleon-like, Krull readily adapts himself to the situation of the moment, and so adept in the practices of chicanery does he become that his victims almost seem to count themselves privileged. And so it is too with the women who encounter the irresistible Krull, for where Krull is, the normal laws of human behavior are in suspense".