Doctor Faustus

'Why must I feel that almost all--no, all--of the devices and conventions used by art are today only fit for parody?' Adrian Leverkühn is a composer who, at terrible personal cost, makes the breakthrough from traditional art to extreme modernism and success. Creative and brilliant, he will stop at nothing to achieve greatness. Thomas Mann wrote Doctor Faustus (1947) in American exile during and just after the Second World War. A prominent and long-standing defender of democracy, he sought to understand, in cultural and intellectual terms, how Germany had succumbed to Nazism. Mann structures his story through references to the German legend of Faust and his pact with the Devil. The life of the solitary composer, an ultimately tragic figure, is recounted by his friend and biographer, who represents a sadly ineffectual humanism, and whose social activities provide a panorama of middle-class German society in the early twentieth century. Ritchie Robertson's new English translation is accompanied by detailed annotations and an introduction illuminating the themes of the novel. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Ritchie Robertson retired in 2021 as Schwarz-Taylor Professor of German at the University of Oxford. He is now an Emeritus Fellow of the Queen's College. His many books include Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature (1985), The Enlightenment: The Pursiuit of Happiness, 1680-1790 (2020) and German Political Tragedy: The Machiavellian Plot and the Necessary Crime (2024), as well as books on Kafka and Goethe in OUP's Very Short Introductions series. Since 2004, he has been a Fellow of the British Academy.