Bored with eternity and weary of hell, Satan slips into human skin as Henry Wyatt, a fabulously rich American, and sets out across Europe in search of amusement. He has money, charm, and centuries of practice at temptation. All he needs are some willing victims.
But the world he finds is not the one he expected. Humanity, it turns out, is far more cunning, greedy, and cruel than the Prince of Darkness had imagined. His schemes unravel, his confidence cracks, and the great tempter finds himself outplayed at his own game, then caught off guard by something he never planned for: love.
Written in the final months of Andreyev’s life and published after his death in 1919, this darkly comic, bitterly ironic masterpiece asks a haunting question: what happens when the devil meets mankind and discovers he has nothing left to teach?