Mefisto

“A novel of virtuosic scope.”—The New York Times

A Faustian fever dream of numbers, knowledge, and the darkness that lurks beyond comprehension.

Gabriel Swan is a math prodigy obsessed with the idea of order. He sees the world not in words, but in numbers. Compelled to find the elusive code behind life itself, he plunges into a search for absolute meaning. But when he meets Felix—a charismatic, otherworldly stranger who seems to hold the answers—Gabriel’s journey takes a darker turn.

He becomes involved with a mesmerizing trio formed by sad, obese Mr. Kasperl, who is like someone “from a country where no one else lived”; lovely, mute Sophie; and the Mephistophelian Felix, whose appearances always foretoken disaster. In an abandoned mansion, their changing relations, and Gabriel’s quest for a “formula that will reduce the disorder of common things to an equation,” slowly and inevitably land him in his own private season in Hell.

Inspired by the legend of Faust, Mefisto is a dazzling, philosophical novel about genius, obsession, and the limits of rationality. With his trademark prose—elegant, luminous, and hypnotic—Banville transforms myth into a haunting study of human fragility and the borders of reality.