What to read after Faust?

Goethe's Faust, Part Two is distinguished by its extraordinary range of allusion, tone, and style. Full of variety of historical scene and poetic effect, the masterpiece is at times satirical, witty, and even broadly comic, at others grand and soaring. This sparkling new translation of Faust, Part Two now affords English-language readers much of the pleasure afforded readers of the original German. Award-winning translator Martin Greenberg casts Goethe's verse in a natural, vigorous, lucid English that preserves Goethe's poetic effects while accurately rendering the sense of the original lines.

The book contains a preface by the translator that helps to bridge the abrupt transition from Part One to Part Two. The story is still that of Faust and his compact with Mephistopheles, but no longer narrowly domestic, ranging through classical Greece, medieval and modern Europe, and an exalted conclusion in a Goethean heaven.