The Magicians

Front Cover
Thorndike Press, 2010 - Fiction - 691 pages
A thrilling and original comingof- age novel about a young man practicing magic in the real world
Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he's still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.
He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn't bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin's fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.
At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren't black and white, love and sex aren't simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.

Other editions - View all

About the author (2010)

Lev Grossman was born on June 26, 1969. He received a degree in literature from Harvard University in 1991. He spent three years in the Ph.D. program in comparative literature at Yale University, but left before completing his dissertation. In 2002, he became a book reviewer and one of the lead technology writers for Time magazine. He has written for Salon, The Village Voice, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Entertainment Weekly, The Believer, Lingua Franca, and the New York Times. His first novel, Warp, was published in 1997. His other novels include Codex, The Magicians, which won a 2010 Alex Award, The Magician King and The Magician's Land.