"John E. Woods is revising our impression of Thomas Mann,
masterpiece by masterpiece." --The New Yorker
"Doctor Faustus is Mann's deepest artistic gesture. . . . Finely
translated by John E. Woods." --The New Republic
Thomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now
newly rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods,
is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells
its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian
Leverkühn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated,
overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played
by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return for twenty-four
years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his
soul--and the ability to love his fellow man.
Leverkühn's life story is a brilliant allegory of the rise of the
Third Reich, of Germany's renunciation of its own humanity and its
embrace of ambition and nihilism. It is also Mann's most profound
meditation on the German genius--both national and individual--and
the terrible responsibilities of the truly great artist.