Doktor Faustus

First published in 1947, this novel is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian LeverkÃ1⁄4hn, 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 24 years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul and the ability to love his fellow man. LeverkÃ1⁄4hn's life story is an allegory of the rise of the 3rd Reich, of Germany's renunciation of its own humanity and its embrace of ambition and nihilism.