In the smoke-and-mirrors world of Victorian music halls, two talented young stage magicians vie to be known as the best illusionist in London. Each of them performs a masterful and seemingly impossible illusion, and each is determined to unravel the secret of his rival’s trick at any cost. But what starts out as professional jealousy soon escalates into a bitter and deadly obsession whose terrible consequences will still be felt a century later by their descendants, who have their own surprising reasons for wanting to discover the truth.
One of Christopher Priest’s most acclaimed works and winner of both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the World Fantasy Award, The Prestige is an ingeniously constructed entertainment, a masterpiece of misdirection where nothing is what it seems. Readers who have seen the 2006 film adaptation directed by Christopher Nolan will find that though the book shares many similarities with the movie, it also contains many surprises, as well as a chilling ending that the reader will never see coming.
Christopher Priest's classic novel The Affirmation is also available from Valancourt Books, and his The Space Machine, A Dream of Wessex, and The Separation are all forthcoming from Valancourt.
“A taut, twisting, prize-winning story of two magicians and their fin-de-siècle rivalry that taints successive generations of their respective families. Electrifying effects and a deft handling of mysteries and their explanations (some remaining tantalizingly incomplete) in an unexpectedly compelling fusion of weird science and legerdemain.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Enthrallingly odd. A carefully calculated period style that is remarkably akin to that of the late Robertson Davies. Priest has brought it off with great imagination and skill.” – Publishers Weekly
“Lushly set in the velvet-cloaked, smoke-and-mirrors world of professional magic in turn-of-the-century London, this extraordinary novel interweaves the bitter rivalry and strange secrets of two magicians. The story is enormously complex yet like a dazzling magic act itself: a series of perfectly executed illusions that build in suspense and difficulty. The result is a surprise that marvelously satisfies the myriad genres that Priest has successfully managed to merge and transform in this eerie fictional sleight of hand.” – Entertainment Weekly
“The Prestige is a brilliantly constructed entertainment, with a plot as simple and intricate as a nest of Chinese boxes … a dizzying magic show of a novel, chock-a-block with all the props of Victorian sensation fiction.” – Washington Post
“It’s an extraordinary performance, his best book in years, perhaps his best ever. Highly recommended.” – The New York Review of Science Fiction
**
Amazon.com Review
The Washington Post called this "a dizzying magic show of a novel, chock-a-block with all the props of Victorian sensation fiction: seances, multiple narrators, a family curse, doubles, a lost notebook, wraiths, and disembodied spirits; a haunted house, awesome mad-doctor machinery, a mausoleum, and ghoulish horrors; a misunderstood scientist, impossible disappearances; the sins of the fathers visited upon their descendants." Winner of the 1996 World Fantasy Award, The Prestige is even better than that, because unlike many Victorians, Priest writes crisp, unencumbered prose. And anyone who's ever thrilled to the arcing electricity in the "It's alive!" scene in Frankenstein will relish the "special effects" by none other than Nikola Tesla.
From Publishers Weekly
Priest, one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists (1983 list), has not been overproductive since he made a small reputation with The Affirmation and The Glamour, published here more than a dozen years ago. His new novel (the title of which refers to the residue left after a magician's successful trick) is enthrallingly odd. In a carefully calculated period style that is remarkably akin to that of the late Robertson Davies, Priest writes of a pair of rival magicians in turn-of-the-century London. Each has a winning trick the other craves, but so arcane is the nature of these tricks, so incredibly difficult are they to perform, that they take on a peculiar life of their own?in one case involving a mysterious apparent double identity, in the other a reliance on the ferocious powers unleashed in the early experimental years of electricity. The rivalry of the two men is such that in the end, though both are ashamed of the strength of their feelings of spite and envy, it consumes them both, and affects their respective families for generations. This is a complex tale that must have been extremely difficult to tell in exactly the right sequence, while still maintaining a series of shocks to the very end. Priest has brought it off with great imagination and skill. It's only fair to say, though, that the book's very considerable narrative grip is its principal virtue. The characters and incidents have a decidedly Gothic cast, and only the restraint that marks the story's telling keeps it on the rails.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Description:
In the smoke-and-mirrors world of Victorian music halls, two talented young stage magicians vie to be known as the best illusionist in London. Each of them performs a masterful and seemingly impossible illusion, and each is determined to unravel the secret of his rival’s trick at any cost. But what starts out as professional jealousy soon escalates into a bitter and deadly obsession whose terrible consequences will still be felt a century later by their descendants, who have their own surprising reasons for wanting to discover the truth.
One of Christopher Priest’s most acclaimed works and winner of both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the World Fantasy Award, The Prestige is an ingeniously constructed entertainment, a masterpiece of misdirection where nothing is what it seems. Readers who have seen the 2006 film adaptation directed by Christopher Nolan will find that though the book shares many similarities with the movie, it also contains many surprises, as well as a chilling ending that the reader will never see coming.
Christopher Priest's classic novel The Affirmation is also available from Valancourt Books, and his The Space Machine, A Dream of Wessex, and The Separation are all forthcoming from Valancourt.
“A taut, twisting, prize-winning story of two magicians and their fin-de-siècle rivalry that taints successive generations of their respective families. Electrifying effects and a deft handling of mysteries and their explanations (some remaining tantalizingly incomplete) in an unexpectedly compelling fusion of weird science and legerdemain.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Enthrallingly odd. A carefully calculated period style that is remarkably akin to that of the late Robertson Davies. Priest has brought it off with great imagination and skill.” – Publishers Weekly
“Lushly set in the velvet-cloaked, smoke-and-mirrors world of professional magic in turn-of-the-century London, this extraordinary novel interweaves the bitter rivalry and strange secrets of two magicians. The story is enormously complex yet like a dazzling magic act itself: a series of perfectly executed illusions that build in suspense and difficulty. The result is a surprise that marvelously satisfies the myriad genres that Priest has successfully managed to merge and transform in this eerie fictional sleight of hand.” – Entertainment Weekly
“The Prestige is a brilliantly constructed entertainment, with a plot as simple and intricate as a nest of Chinese boxes … a dizzying magic show of a novel, chock-a-block with all the props of Victorian sensation fiction.” – Washington Post
“It’s an extraordinary performance, his best book in years, perhaps his best ever. Highly recommended.” – The New York Review of Science Fiction
**
Amazon.com Review
The Washington Post called this "a dizzying magic show of a novel, chock-a-block with all the props of Victorian sensation fiction: seances, multiple narrators, a family curse, doubles, a lost notebook, wraiths, and disembodied spirits; a haunted house, awesome mad-doctor machinery, a mausoleum, and ghoulish horrors; a misunderstood scientist, impossible disappearances; the sins of the fathers visited upon their descendants." Winner of the 1996 World Fantasy Award, The Prestige is even better than that, because unlike many Victorians, Priest writes crisp, unencumbered prose. And anyone who's ever thrilled to the arcing electricity in the "It's alive!" scene in Frankenstein will relish the "special effects" by none other than Nikola Tesla.
From Publishers Weekly
Priest, one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists (1983 list), has not been overproductive since he made a small reputation with The Affirmation and The Glamour, published here more than a dozen years ago. His new novel (the title of which refers to the residue left after a magician's successful trick) is enthrallingly odd. In a carefully calculated period style that is remarkably akin to that of the late Robertson Davies, Priest writes of a pair of rival magicians in turn-of-the-century London. Each has a winning trick the other craves, but so arcane is the nature of these tricks, so incredibly difficult are they to perform, that they take on a peculiar life of their own?in one case involving a mysterious apparent double identity, in the other a reliance on the ferocious powers unleashed in the early experimental years of electricity. The rivalry of the two men is such that in the end, though both are ashamed of the strength of their feelings of spite and envy, it consumes them both, and affects their respective families for generations. This is a complex tale that must have been extremely difficult to tell in exactly the right sequence, while still maintaining a series of shocks to the very end. Priest has brought it off with great imagination and skill. It's only fair to say, though, that the book's very considerable narrative grip is its principal virtue. The characters and incidents have a decidedly Gothic cast, and only the restraint that marks the story's telling keeps it on the rails.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.