Synopses & Reviews
From one of the U.K.s most dazzling novelists—whom Richard Ford has called “a profound writer”—comes this daring new novel set in the unsteady, self-contained world of a luxury liner.
While on a transatlantic trip with her soon-to-be-fiancé Derek, Elizabeth unexpectedly runs into ex-lover Arthur, with whom she shares a shady past: The pair once worked as traveling spiritual mediums who conned the vulnerable by pretending to contact the spirits of departed loved ones. While Derek remains seasick and cabin-bound, Elizabeth wanders the ship, alternately avoiding and seeking out Arthur. Unable to avoid memories of their fractured past, she must face the deception they practiced even as she accepts the peace they brought to the grief-stricken who sought their services.
Intimately addressed to “you,” the reader, The Blue Book is both a portrait of two methodical con artists and a meditation on “how love is a private language, a set of codes, to which the outside world ought not admit impediment” (Telegraph). Irresistibly written, by turns comically wry and stunningly lyrical, with “some of the most unashamedly erotic writing since Nicholson Baker first contemplated a telephone receiver” (New Statesman), the book slowly, deliberately, and devastatingly reveals itself to the reader. The heartbreaking stakes are ultimately nothing less than fact and fiction, life and death.
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"Hypnotic....The Prestige provides the satisfaction of an ambitious and well-told entertainment." San Francisco Chronicle
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"Extraordinary...like a dazzling magic act!" Entertainment Weekly
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"Just as a magic act should be: filled with haunting marvels." Time Out (London)
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"Nothing quite prepares you for the sinister complexity and imaginative flair off The Prestige....Magnificently eerie." The Sunday Times
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"Beautifully written....Priest masters the merging of SF and mainstream, and The Prestige is his finest novel to date." New Scientist
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"A taut, twisting, prize-winning story....An unexpectedly compelling fusion of weird science and legerdemain." Kirkus Reviews
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"As ingenious as it is suspenseful." Newsday
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"[A] marvelously scary entertainment with one of the creepiest final revelations in recent years. Don't miss the magic show!" Gahan Wilson, Realms of Fantasy
Synopsis
In 1878, two young stage magicians clash in the dark during the course of a fraudulent séance. From this moment on, their lives become webs of deceit and revelation as they vie to outwit and expose one another.
Their rivalry will take them to the peaks of their careers, but with terrible consequences. In the course of pursuing each other's ruin, they will deploy all the deception their magicians' craft can command the highest misdirection and the darkest science.
Blood will be spilled, but it will not be enough. In the end, their legacy will pass on for generations...to descendants who must, for their sanity's sake, untangle the puzzle left to them.
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, Christian Bale, David Bowie, Michael Caine, Andy Serkis, and directed by Christopher Nolan!
Synopsis
The winner of the 1995 World Fantasy Award
Synopsis
In 1878, two young stage magicians clash in the dark during the course of a fraudulent séance. From this moment on, their lives become webs of deceit and revelation as they vie to outwit and expose one another.
Their rivalry will take them to the peaks of their careers, but with terrible consequences. In the course of pursuing each other's ruin, they will deploy all the deception their magicians' craft can command--the highest misdirection and the darkest science.
Blood will be spilled, but it will not be enough. In the end, their legacy will pass on for generations...to descendants who must, for their sanity's sake, untangle the puzzle left to them.
Soon to be a major motion picture starring HUGH JACKMAN, SCARLETT JOHANSSON, CHRISTIAN BALE, DAVID BOWIE, MICHAEL CAINE, ANDY SERKIS and directed by CHRISTOPHER NOLAN!
Synopsis
From one of the U.K.s most dazzling authors comes a brutal and funny novel about a pair of fraudulent psychic mediums that is itself an elaborate con game between fact and fiction, life and death—a book as verbally acrobatic as it is emotionally intense.
About the Author
Christopher Priest lives in England.