Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn as Told by a Friend

Thomas Mann

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jul 27, 1999 - Fiction - 544 pages

"John E. Woods is revising our impression of Thomas Mann, masterpiece by masterpiece."  --The New Yorker

"Doctor Faustus is Mann's deepest artistic gesture. . . . Finely translated by John E. Woods." --The New Republic

Thomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now newly rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, 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 twenty-four years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul--and the ability to love his fellow man.

Leverkühn's life story is a brilliant allegory of the rise of the Third Reich, of Germany's renunciation of its own humanity and its embrace of ambition and nihilism. It is also Mann's most profound meditation on the German genius--both national and individual--and the terrible responsibilities of the truly great artist.

What people are saying

Review: Doctor Faustus

User Review  - Holly - Goodreads

I read the Thomas Mann novels one after the other. They were like water to my parched intellect. Except for Buddenbrooks, which I started reading as a child because it had children in it, I started ...

Review: Doctor Faustus

User Review  - Michael Austin - Goodreads

I turned to Doctor Faustus to remedy two major deficiencies in my intellectual development. First, I had never read anything by Thomas Mann. I have started "Death in Venice" a few times, but it just ...

Contents

• Chapter I: 5
• Chapter II: 9
• Chapter III: 14
• Chapter IV: 24
• Chapter V: 33
• Chapter VI: 38
• Chapter VII: 43
• Chapter VIII: 53
• Chapter IX: 78
• Chapter X: 89
• Chapter XI: 95
• Chapter XII: 101
• Chapter XIII: 108
• Chapter XIV: 120
• Chapter XV: 136
• Chapter XVI: 146
• Chapter XVII: 154
• Chapter XVIII: 159
• Chapter XIX: 163
• Chapter XX: 169
• Chapter XXI: 183
• Chapter XXII: 198
• Chapter XXIII: 209
• Chapter XXIV: 226
• Chapter XXV: 237
• Chapter XXVI: 266
• Chapter XXVII: 277
• Chapter XXVIII: 291
• Chapter XXIX: 301
• Chapter XXX: 316
• Chapter XXXI: 327
• Chapter XXXII: 341
• Chapter XXXIII: 354
• Chapter XXXIV: 371
• continued: 381
• conclusion: 390
• Chapter XXXV: 399
• Chapter XXXVI: 408
• Chapter XXXVII: 417
• Chapter XXXVIII: 429
• Chapter XXXIX: 437
• Chapter XL: 445
• Chapter XLI: 455
• Chapter XLII: 463
• Chapter XLIII: 474
• Chapter XLIV: 482
• Chapter XLV: 496
• Chapter XLVI: 504
• Chapter XLVII: 516
• Epilogue: 528
• Authors Note: 535

About the author

Thomas Mann was born in 1875 in Germany. He was only twenty-five when his first novel, Buddenbrooks, was published. In 1924 The Magic Mountain was published, and, five years later, Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Following the rise of the Nazis to power, he left Germany for good in 1933 to live in Switzerland and then in California, where he wrote Doctor Faustus (first published in the United States in 1948). Thomas Mann died in 1955.


From the Hardcover edition.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn as Told by a Friend; Vintage International
• Author: Thomas Mann
• Translated by: John E. Woods
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1999
• ISBN: 0375701168, 9780375701160
• Length: 544 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Classics; Fiction / General; Fiction / Historical; Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Political