Joseph and His Brothers

‘This man is mad. Of that there can no longer be any doubt, and it is pitiable that no one representing psychiatric science is part of our circle.’

Germany, May 1943: a middle-aged scholar retires to his study to reflect on the life and untimely death of his friend, a once-brilliant composer. How his friend, consumed by over-reaching ambition, entered into a pact with the Devil. How he enjoyed twenty-four years of musical genius and extraordinary creative achievement. And how, inevitably and tragically, the Devil returned to demand satisfaction.

A reworking of the classic Faust legend, Doctor Faustus is one of the great novels of the twentieth century: a powerful allegory of the rise of the Nazism in Germany and a meditation on madness, ambition and the dangerous attractions of nihilism.