Klaus Mann wrote his “Mephistopheles” in less than half a year. He began the novel at the beginning of 1936, and by May of the same year the manuscript was ready. Shortly afterward, it appeared as a preprint in a Paris newspaper. The novel tells a tragic story of the moral downfall of actor Hendrik Höfgen. For his artistic career and thirst for power, he was willing to pay any price—even if it meant betraying his former comrades and, most of all, himself. But when it seemed the goal had been achieved, Höfgen was horrified to realize that he had made an irreversible mistake—he had sold his soul to the Devil himself.