Alchemy is the leitmotif of this gripping novel, set against a richly authentic backdrop of 1840s Cambridge. The Maiden Faust presents a new and startlingly original take on the Faust legend made famous by Marlowe, Goethe and Mann. In this forceful, female-centred, narrative the ageing scholar Faust of the Gothic myth is replaced by Philippa Austen, a Cambridge undergraduate in an alternative Victorian England where alchemy holds sway. After Philippa encounters the beautiful but unearthly Martha Stowfell, she strikes a bargain to unpick the threads of her dark history – but at what cost? The reader has to wait to the large page to fully decode the plot of this extraordinary piece of fiction.
