" 'Hey, Faust'. So begins Nye's slangy, shaggy, pseudo-Rabelaisian reworking of the Faust legend-but the demythifying raunchiness that worked fairly well for Falstaff (1976) and Merlin (1979) mostly falls fiat in this macabre, pornographic description of Faust's last 40 days (before the Devil comes to claim his soul) ... this time his tireless jazziness becomes tiresome, he degrades the tragic vision of the Faust originals without putting anything in their place, and-like a gifted raconteur telling a long, tasteless joke he starts on a false note and stays there throughout." --Kirkus Reviews 1981 (undated online)

1st ed. LCCN: 80-142102 OCLC: 256120179, as full title: Faust : being the Historia von D. Johann Fausten dem wietbeschreyten Zauberer und Schwartzkünstler, or History of Dr. John Faust the notorious Magician and Necromancer, as written by his familiar servant and disciple Christopher Wagner, now for the first time Englished from the Low German Price from review by Maev Kennedy Irish Times 1980-10-18 p11; "£5.95 in UK"