Books: Pope Oedipus

THE HOLY SINNER (336 pp.)—Thomas Mann—Knopf ($3.50).

In Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann's first novel, little Hanno Buddenbrook draws a long slanting line under his family genealogy and when reproved for it haltingly explains, "I thought—I thought nothing else was coming." At 76, Author Mann fears that nothing else is coming for the civilized world, that humanity faces a long, black night of barbarism.

But if Mann believes in a deepening darkness, he is not the man to write about it. In his new novel (his 13th), he fastens lovingly on the past—a past of piety and chivalry. The Holy Sinner is his reworking...