The Phantom of Manhattan

The Phantom of Manhattan is a novel by Frederick Forsyth that was published in 1999 in London under the title The Phantom of Manhattan . The novel was published in 2000 in a German translation by Wulf Bergner .

content

The novel is less based on the classic model by Gaston Leroux . Forsyth describes the plot of the musical written by Andrew Lloyd Webber in his preface as the only logical one.

In September 1906, the dying Antoinette Giry reveals to the notary Dufour that she hid Erik Mühlheim, the phantom of the Paris Opera, after the tragic events in the Paris Opera and helped him to escape to America. The Phantom has lived on the enclave of Coney Island since 1894 , then as a millionaire in the EM Tower, Park Row, Manhattan in 1906 . In the course of the novel, Erik Mühlheim learns that he is the biological father of the twelve-year-old boy Pierre, whose mother Christine is now a celebrated soprano and the wife of Victome Raoul de Chagny. He raises Pierre as his own son. The climax of the novel is Pierre's confrontation with his biological father, the phantom of the opera.

shape

The novel is divided into 16 parts and an epilogue. In each part the different protagonists of the novel have their say and describe the story from their perspective. In this way, the action is conveyed programmatically through an outside perspective. The reader has to decide for himself which version seems credible to him at the moment. Forsyth's narrative technique prevents identification or empathy with the rather tragic main characters and achieves distance with the recipients of the story. The style is reminiscent of Christa Wolf's " Medea: Voices ".

Edits

The novel was edited in 2010 by Andrew Lloyd Webber under the title Love Never Dies as a musical. The German premiere of the same ( love never dies ) took place in 2015.

Text output

• Frederick Forsyth: The Phantom of Manhattan. German by Wulf Bergner. Bertelsmann. Munich 2000. ISBN 3-570-00325-6