'...I met the sad menopausee and offered her, at the flick of a switch, a return of beauty, youth, and desire. And - after all, I'm no stinge-merchant - power and money as well. Why not? If a man, such as Dr Faustus, was offered such commodities by myself... why not a woman, in this age of equality?'

Emma Tennant's ingenious modern-day reworking of the Faust legend describes a young woman's dark discovery of just what befell her kindly long-lost grandmother.

Brilliant

Penelope Fitzgerald, Evening Standard

An elegant and bitter story...

an angry diagnosis of consumerism, pollution, wealth, poverty and war...

It is a masterpiece.

Or, as the Devil himself might say, one hell of a book.