Doctor Faustus

Thomas Mann's *Doctor Faustus* (1947) is a complex Künstlerroman and national allegory centered on Adrian Leverkühn, a brilliant composer who exchanges his soul for artistic genius and ultimately pays for it with madness and death. Narrated by his humanist friend Serenus Zeitblom, the novel interweaves biography, theological speculation, musical theory, and historical commentary, drawing on the Fa...