Royal Highness

Disciplines Literary Studies & Poetry Fiction

About the Book

Royal Highness is the delightfully ironic tale of a small, decadent German duchy and its invigoration by the intellect and values of an independent-minded American woman. Peopled with a range of characters from aristocrat to artisan, Royal Highness provides a microcosmic view of Europe before the Great War.

About the Author

Thomas Mann (1875-1955), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929, wrote essays as well as some of the great novels of the twentieth century, including Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, Death in Venice, Joseph and His Brothers, and Doctor Faustus. Russell A. Berman is the author of The Rise of the Modern German Novel.
Alan Sica is the author of Weber, Irrationality, and Social Order.

Reviews

"The great virtue of Royal Highness is its relaxed, fairy-tale quality that naturally brings the reader inside that 'Edwardian' calm which preceded everything common to contemporary social life. It is very easy to make connections between the book and theories of stratification, statemaking, ritual, legitimacy, even the political economy of preindustrialized states."—Alan Sica, author of Weber, Irrationality, and Social Order