The autobiographical story of one of the most influential personalities of the 20th century

In this autobiographical work, Thomas Mann recounts the most important events in his life, his desire for independence and freedom, details about the construction of his works and the sources from which he drew inspiration. In addition, he writes about the similarities between his own life and his characters', clearly visible, for example, in his great novel The Buddenbrooks; the singular experience of the time his wife Katia spent in Switzerland, when she fell ill with her lungs, as he described it in The Magic Mountain, and other less studied influences, such as the inspiration for the characters in the Biblical novel cycle José y his brothers, according to Andrés Sánchez in his enlightening final essay on the life of the writer

Political activist against the National Socialist regime that was emerging in Europe, he paid for his opposition to Hitler with voluntary exile in various European countries, and from 1940 in the United States, where he had an intense intellectual and personal life as a lecturer. Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929, in his life he accumulated up to seventeen honorary doctorates, some annulled by the Nazi regime and others by the American government, on suspicion of supporting "communist politics".

In Relato de mi vida, the main motifs that run through the work of Thomas Mann are glimpsed: his talent, together with the perfection of his style, and the reflection of his successes and desire for freedom as a writer and public figure. . It is a vital document of one of the most influential personalities of the 20th century.

The book also includes his daughter Erika Mann's text My Father's Last Year, in which she offers interesting comments on the relationships of the Mann couple with other writers and personalities of the time, and describes the anguishing illness that would lead him to death on August 12, 1955, in Zürich.