‘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.