Mefisto, a brilliant modern-day retelling of the Faust legend, explores the relations between science and the real world, and between the scientist and the human cost of his explorations. Gabriel Swan, a math prodigy obsessed with the idea of order, becomes involved with the 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.