He is anessayist andcolumnist for the Italian newspaperCorriere della Sera and for other European journals and newspapers. His numerous studies have helped to promote an awareness in Italy of Central European culture and of the literature of theHabsburg myth, a concept which he coined in 1963.[3][2]
Magris is a member of several European academies and served as a senator in theItalian Senate from 1994 to 1996.[1]
His first book on the Habsburg myth in modern Austrian literature rediscovered central European literature. His journalistic writings have been collected inDietro le parole ("Behind Words", 1978) andItaca e oltre ("Ithaca and Beyond", 1982). He has written essays onE.T.A. Hoffmann,Henrik Ibsen,Italo Svevo,Robert Musil,Hermann Hesse andJorge Luis Borges.[4] His novels and theatre productions, many translated into several languages, includeIllazioni su una sciabola (1984),Danubio (1986),Stadelmann (1988),Un altro mare (1991), andMicrocosmi (1997). His travel writing is collected inJourneying (Yale University Press, 2018).[5]
His breakthrough wasDanubio (published asDanube in English) (1986), which is amagnum opus.[6] In this book (said by the author to be a "drowned novel"), Magris tracks the course of theDanube from its sources to the sea, tracing the influences ofChristendom andIslam on the formation ofcentral Europe.[7][8]Microcosmi (Microcosms in English) focuses on the Italian-Istrian borderlands.[9]
L’anello di Clarisse: grande stile e nichilismo nella letteratura moderna (1984; "Clarisse’s Ring: Tradition and Nihilism in the Modern Literature")[2]
Illazioni su una sciabola (1984; translated asInferences from a Sabre,ISBN0-7486-6036-4)[23]
Danubio (1986; translated asDanube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea,ISBN0-00-272074-4)
^Glaser, Christina."Newsmeldung".Universität Regensburg (in German). Retrieved17 July 2020.
^Ignatieff, Michael (19 April 1990)."Michael Ignatieff · Living like a moth".London Review of Books. Retrieved17 July 2025.Claudio Magris's novella, Inferences on a Sabre, is about one particularly pathetic White Russian remnant, the Cossacks who briefly occupied north-eastern Italy in late 1944. The novella, written in the form of a letter from one old priest to another priest, remembering the events of the war's end, is a very affecting and effective reflection on the logic of collaboration among these magnificent warriors who were lured into barbarity by visions of a Cossack homeland in the Thousand-Year Reich.
Pireddu, Nicoletta. (2015)The Works of Claudio Magris: Temporary Homes, Mobile Identities, European Borders. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.ISBN978-1-137-49262-3
---. (2012) "On the Threshold, Always Homeward Bound: Claudio Magris's European Journey."The Journal of European Studies 42 (4): 333–341.
---. (2022) Guest Editor,Claudio Magris and the Quest for Europe. Special Issue,The European Legacy 27 (7-8), 2022.
