Mefisto

“A dark and glittering parable of ambition and ruin.”—The Guardian

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

Gabriel Swan is a gifted mathematician who 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.

As Gabriel’s intellectual pursuits give way to emotional chaos, he finds himself at the mercy of strange encounters, physical ruin, and moral confusion. Is Felix a savior, a devil, or merely a mirror of Gabriel’s own unraveling?

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.

Author Biography

John Banville, the author of many novels including The Sea and Christine Falls has been the recipient of the Man Booker Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. He lives in Dublin.