In 1925, Thomas Mann had reached the apogee of literary achievement. Fresh off the publication of The Magic Mountain the year before, and on his way to winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929, he already needed a new challenge. So he took on the only worthy competitor left: God.
Pen in hand, Mann set out to construct his Babel: Joseph and His Brothers, a reimagination of the classic Genesis tale. It would take Mann 16 years and 2,000 pages before he considered the work complete. He began his project as a happy Weimar citizen, drafted it in Swiss exile from the Third Reich, and finished it a refugee beneath the California sun.
