It's a piece about a man who sells his soul for immortality and what he experiences over the next two hundred years. The main character is a tortured soul, who through his experiences, comes to realize his place in humanity, as well, helps us to understand our place. It moves through time as it touches on certain less substantial events that actually occurred in our own history, but helped to shape mankind and society as we see it now. The book deals with many different aspects of life, but its greatest theme is that of mankind's need to be greater than we are. Perception is perhaps our greatest failure in seeing the truth that is out there. We cloud our judgment in a way that creates the reality that we want, not what is real. A single character's life within this novel expresses this in detail as he also learns the most valuable of lessons.