Confession of the swindler Felix Krul

Felix Krul, the son of a bankrupt champagne manufacturer, describes the story of his social rise: from stolen chocolate as a child to the role of a marquis in an audience with the King of Portugal.
In the last novel of Thomas Mann, through an adventure-erotic plot like "The Story of My Life" by Giacomo Casanova, the tradition of confessional memoirs, laid down by St. Augustine, is parodied, taking it to its extreme limit.
"Felix Krul" is only on the surface a cascade of witty situations, bright scenes and a panopticon of whimsical characters, the plot of the novel serves as a background for the treatment of Thomas Mann's favorite philosophical problems, such as illusoryness and untruth in art, the limits of true aristocracy, the duality of life's role and the search for identity, the world as representation and simulacrum.