Tonio Kröger, son of a respected family in Lübeck, grows up feeling different. He admires his schoolfellow Hans Hansen, blond and sure of himself, then falls in love with blonde Inge, who does not notice him. Once he becomes a writer, he feels at home neither among artists nor among the “normal” people he secretly envies.
Thomas Mann put a great deal of himself into it: it is a book for everyone who has ever felt like an outsider.
This short story reads well in the language you are learning, with the translation always in view.
