The Prestige

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For the 2006 film adaptation of the novel, see The Prestige (film).

The Prestige is a 1995 novel by Christopher Priest revolving around two Victorian era stage magicians. It is set primarily in London, in the late 19th century and early 20th century, although it stretches occasionally to areas outside of London (primarily Colorado Springs, Colorado), and also briefly to the protagonists' descendants in the present day.

Book cover of The Prestige.

In the book, "the prestige" is old magic parlance for the final stage of a magic act. (According to an interview with the author, he actually made up the terminology when he wrote the book, and he picked the word because of its similarity to "prestidigitation".^[1])

The novel received the James Tait Award and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

1 Structure
2 Synopsis
3 2006 Film
4 Publication
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Structure

The novel is structured essentially into two halves. Both are first-person accounts of the lives of the two protagonists, first Alfred Borden, then Rupert Angier. There is also an interlude between the two sections, a prologue and an epilogue, which are all set in the modern day and involve a meeting between the only two remaining descendants of the characters.

The novel is epistolary in structure; that is, it purports to be a collection of real diaries that were kept by the protagonists and later collated.

[edit] Synopsis

Alfred Borden and Rupert Angier rise to become world-renowned stage magicians. Early in their careers, they meet and a bitter feud develops as they constantly try to out-do, and even sabotage, the other's acts. The frame story involves the great-grandchildren of Borden and Angier and their investigations into how their own lives have been affected by their ancestors' conflict. The events of the past are revealed primarily through each of the magicians' diaries.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Borden develops an act called The Transported Man, and an improved version named The New Transported Man, which appears to move him from one closed cabinet to another in the blink of an eye and without appearing to pass through the intervening space. The act seems to defy physics and puts all previous acts to shame. Although never explicitly revealed, it seems probable that the secret of The Transported Man is that Borden, all his life, has been two people; his trick involves extreme use of a twin brother as a double, to the extent that they both live the same life. This is suggested early in the novel when, during Alfred Borden's first person explanation he appears to be talking to himself. We might think that he is talking to his double by using their diary as a medium (presumably, they couldn't meet without revealing their secret), but that both are using the first-person.

Angier cannot discern the method that Borden uses and desperately tries to equal him, and with the help of the acclaimed physicist Nikola Tesla, develops an act named In A Flash, which has a similar result, though a starkly different method. For Angier's trick, Tesla successfully creates a device capable of teleporting a being from one place to another, but which has a surprising side-effect. As well as re-creating the subject wherever is deigned by the device, the subject is also left behind, but as a cold, lifeless shell. Angier, with bitter humour, refers to these shells as 'prestiges'.

Angier's new act is equal to Borden's and Borden, in retaliation, attempts to discover how In A Flash is performed. During one performance he breaks into the backstage area, and turns off the power to Angier's device, though he does not discover what it does, during the act itself. As a result, the teleportation is incomplete, and both the new Angier and the old, 'prestige' Angier continue to live, though the old feels constantly weak while the new seems to have a lack of physical substance. The corporeal Angier fakes the death of his magic act alter-ego and returns to his family estate, where he becomes terminally ill.

The incorporeal Angier, alienated from the world by his ghostly form and realizing Borden's secret, attacks one of them before a performance. However, Borden's apparent poor health and Angier's sense of morality intervene and Angier does not carry through with the murder. It is implied that this Borden dies a few days later, and the incorporeal Angier travels to meet his twin. They obtain Borden's diary and publish it after omitting the brothers' secret. Shortly afterwards, the corporeal Angier dies and his ghostly twin uses the device to teleport himself into the body, hoping that either he would return it back to life and be one person again or kill himself instantly. It is discovered in the final chapter that the reconstructed Angier has continued to survive to the present day.

[edit] 2006 Film

Main article: The Prestige (film)

A motion picture adaptation, directed by Christopher Nolan, was released on October 20, 2006 in the United States. It stars Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as Borden and Angier respectively, as well as Scarlett Johansson, Michael Caine, Andy Serkis and David Bowie. The novel was adapted by Christopher and Johnathan Nolan.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film employs the same plot elements as the book, with one crucial exception: Tesla’s device produces a perfectly healthy duplicate of Angier (or any other living organism or object).

The first time he uses the device in his workshop alone, one of two things happen. The first interpretation is that the original Angier shoots his newly materialized duplicate dead on the spot. In subsequent uses of the machine for public performance, the original is dropped through a trapdoor into a tank of water, drowning him, leaving only the new “transported” Angier alive. However, it can be argued that the first time Angier uses the device, the first duplicate killed the original, and the other duplicates drowned during the performances. It is believed that the Angier in the new location is a duplicate, and their personalities are exactly alike. The final scene of the movie reveals a long dark corridor, the walls lined with metal-reinforced glass tanks, each containing a secretly drowned Angier.

The second deviation from the book is the manner in which one of the Bordens dies. In the movie Borden again breaks into the backstage area. However this time he sees one of the clones drowning. He is seen watching Angier die, accused of murdering Angier, and sentenced to death by hanging. In the end one of the brothers dies while the other lives on to take revenge on Angier, killing him amid his deceased duplicates.

There are constant hints throughout the film leading the viewer to the twist. One is an act involving birds in which one bird is vanished, being killed in the process, while another appears in its stead. Borden's wife also regards throughout the film that sometimes her husband is in love with her, whereas other days he doesn't seem himself. Looking back we can now see that literally her 'husband' sometimes loved her, sometimes didn't, thanks to the single life the twins led. This perceived ambivalence leads his wife to despair and the brink of leaving him, as she suspects and accuses her husband of infidelity, exposing his affair with his female stage assistant. Of course it is not her husband, but the secret twin brother who has truly fallen in love with the other woman, and who all along has refused to betray that love by being "husband" to his brother's wife. Both twin men were after all faithful to the women they each separately loved.

A subplot of the film touches upon the real life rivalry between Tesla and Thomas Edison, both brilliant inventors working at harnessing the power of electricity, who developed a bitter feud until the death of Edison.