Description: The winner of the 1996 World Fantasy Award
Brief description: Christopher Priest (1943-2024) was the critically-acclaimed author of the World Fantasy Award-winning novel The Prestige, the film adaptation of which was a box-office hit nominated for two Academy Awards. Among his many other distinguished novels were The Affirmation, A Dream of Wessex, and Indoctrinaire.
Review Quotes:
"A brilliant conjuring act by one of the master illusionists of our time." --Wired on The Prestige
"One of our most gifted writers." --John Fowles on The Prestige "Extraordinary--like a dazzling magic act!" --Entertainment Weekly on The Prestige "A dizzying show of a novel....Imagine Possession rewritten by Barbara Vine, or Robertson Davies at his most smoothly diabolical. A brilliantly constructed entertainment!" --The Washington Post on The Prestige "As ingenious as it is suspenseful." --Newsday on The Prestige "Nothing quite prepares you for the sinister complexity and imaginative flair of The Prestige . . . Magnificently eerie." --Anthony Quinn, The Sunday Times "Beautifully written . . . Two magicians vie with each other to create the perfect illusion: vanishing from one part of the stage and reappearing instantaneously in another. It's a story of utter fakery and scientific audacity. The pioneer of electrical power, Nikola Tesla, appears in a supporting role; to say more would reveal too much. Priest masters the merging of SF and mainstream, and The Prestige is his finest novel to date." --New Scientist on The Prestige "A taut, twisting, prize-winning story of two magicians and their fierce fin-de-siècle rivalry that taints successive generations of their respective families...An unexpectedly compelling fusion of weird science and legerdemain." --Kirkus on The Prestige "Remarkably akin to the style of the late Robertson Davies...Priest has brought it off with great imagination and skill." --Publishers Weekly on The Prestige "Hypnotic...The Prestige provides the satisfaction of an ambitious and well-told entertainment." --San Francisco Chronicle "The Prestige is in every way a marvelously scary entertainment with one of the creepiest final revelations in recednt years. Don't miss the magic show!" --Gahan Wilson, Realms of Fantasy "Just as a magic act should be: filled with haunting marvels." --Time Out London on The Prestige