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    The Magus
    The Magus
    The Magus
    Audiobook26 hours

    The Magus

    Written by John Fowles

    Narrated by Nicholas Boulton

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    John Fowles’s The Magus was a literary landmark of the 1960s. Nicholas Urfe goes to a Greek island to teach at a private school and becomes enmeshed in curious happenings at the home of a mysterious Greek recluse, Maurice Conchis. Are these events, involving attractive young English sisters, just psychological games, or an elaborate joke, or more? Reality shifts as the story unfolds. The Magus reflected the issues of the 1960s perfectly, but even almost half a century after its first publication, it continues to create tension and concern, remaining the page-turner that it was when it was first released.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateSep 1, 2012
    ISBN9781843796343
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    Reviews for The Magus

    4/5

    417 ratings59 reviews

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    • 1/5
      I slogged through this book hoping it would get better. It has a mystery element which forces you to keep reading. But by the end you realise that you've wasted hours of you life on a 500 page misogynistic diatribe. I think this is my least favourite book of all time.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5

      Fabulously long, it needed to be to fit it all in. I'm not quite sure where to start describing this without giving it all away. If I could give it all away because I'm not quite sure I understood it all, or even if it all could be understood.

      It's the story of Nicholas Urfe, twenty something in 1952, ends up as the English master in a Greek boys school. Life on the Greek island gets all a bit odd, to put it mildly.

      I did find it a trifle slow to get going, but knew enough about Fowles' writing to know that it wasn't going to be a straightforward story. I could probably have left it anytime in the first couple of hundred pages (of 600) but not in the last couple of hundred when I couldn't turn the pages over fast enough.

      Definitley an author I'll be reading more of.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Men might really like this book. Women, not so much.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      * NO SPOILERS WERE USED IN THE WRITING OF THIS REVIEW! *Individuals like Nicholas from the Magus are common among my generation of hedonistic urbanites: self-centered slackers out for themselves, with no morals or principles guiding their actions.In the Magus, one such "modern" (read "self-centered") individual finds himself stuck on a small Greek island, where he becomes entangled in an eccentric millionaire's mysterious web of games and deceit.I know many people like Nicholas, and I wish that this book were required reading on the road to adulthood! The lessons of love and selflessness that Fowles presents are priceless, and may otherwise take some people a lifetime to grasp. Not to mention the many other gems of wisdom making this a book to be read, and re-read, and re-read..

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Catch-22. The plot device twists like Hellers novel. Puritans would probably want to ban this book but the funny thing is that the redemption of a bed-hopper could be one of the moral interpretations. Many issues are addressed in the book while the symbolism and literary referances add to the thesis worthiness of this novel. It could easily be seen as long and tedious but I believe it is worth the effort..

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      The Magus is the first novel written by an obviously talented writer. If that sounds a bit like damning with faint praise, that's because it is. Every once in a while, you encounter a work that seems as if it should make for great art. There's obviously talent and intelligence on the artist's side, and the work itself does not appear to lack for ambition. Yet what comes out seems to lack a certain vitality, to seem impressive more for its ambition than its actual achievements. The Magus is the story of a callow Englishman who is teaching on a small Greek island, where he is drawn into some strange psychological games by one of the inhabitants of the island. Nicholas Urfe is our protagonist, an emotionally stunted womanizer getting over an affair with an Australian air hostess, who takes a teaching position at a Greek academy on the island of Phraxos. He has been warned by a former teacher about a certain gentleman who owns a large estate on the island. Despite this warning (or perhaps because of it), he meets up with said gentleman, Conchis and becomes involved in odd philosophical and psychological games. The set up is ripe for fascinating explorations of character or philosophy, and the story is full of mythological and literary allusions. However, for all it's apparent brilliance, it never really manages to achieve the kind of mind-bending exploration of truth or human nature that it seems to have set out for itself. Despite the novel's many references to Othello and The Tempest, to me this felt more like a case of Much Ado About Nothing. All of what should make the novel fascinating, it's psychophilosophical speculation, its many allusions, its labrynthine structure, ultimately work against it. The psychological exploration reaches an interesting point in a flashback encounter between a rational man and an overwhelming evil, but then that gives way to one bored cad's inability to commit to his girlfriend. The novel's many allusions to literature, to art, to mythology and occultism reach a level of oversaturating, creating the impression that they exist in the novel not so much for their fidelity to the plot but because the author wanted to show that they could be worked into the plot. And, worst of all, the twisty narrative ultimately twists into itself. I have simple criteria for what makes an effective plot twist: it must create the impression of being both unexpected and inevitable. The twists in The Magus may be largely unexpected, but there is nothing inevitable about them. And without inevitability, a twist is just artificial, a transparent attempt at tricking the reader. The result, then, is of a plot that is not organic so much as mechanical.For the novel to work as it should, Nicholas should serve as a proxy for the reader. We should feel some thrill or relief when Nicholas has managed to get things his way, feel a sinking feeling when events move unexpectedly outside his control. But neither the character nor the plot ever really allow for that degree of investment.If I may delve into the analogy of a horror movie (because horror is the least of the genres), when Nicholas goes to open the door into the haunted house, there should be a feeling of, 'No, don't open that door!' Instead, the feeling is one of, 'C'mon, open the freakin' door; I want to see the kind of CGI they used on the monster.'Most grating is that Nicholas keeps asserting that he has things in hand, that he understands Conchis' scheme, and that he's not going to let himself be manipulated anymore. Seriously, you could change his name to Nicholas Dumbass (with an aside from Nick regarding how he liked to claim he was descended from the French Dumas) without in any way decreasing my estimation of his intelligence. As a reader, it seemed clear the twists were designed to be impossible to guess beforehand. (Warning: I'm going to start tossing out spoilers here.) Perhaps most dissapointing was the way that the artificiality of the story affected some of the elements that were actually intriguing. Allison, Nicholas' emotionally damaged Australian girlfriend, makes for a compelling foil for him throughout the early part of the novel. There's something real about her--messy, vulnerable, too honest--that made her endearing to me. After she fakes her death and becomes involved in Conchis's conspiracy, she lost that realness, becoming as artificial as the plot. Whatever spark of messiness animated her early on no longer seems charmingly real by the end, which meant emotionally I was moving in the opposite direction than the protagonist. At the beggining of the novel, I could wish for Nicholas and Allison to try to stay together and work out their issues. By the end, when Nicholas is meeting her and having his little 'OK, I'm a total cad and probably no good for you, but I'm ready to try to commit' speech, I couldn't see why he bothered. And that is, I think, meant to be the culmination of the novel, the final emotional awakening. A few hundred pages earlier, Conchis had related a story of the island during WWII. In the story, the Nazis occupy the island. Some German soldiers are killed by Greek partisans, and Conchis' functions as a kind of liasion for them. Some German soldiers are killed by Greek partisans, who are later captured by the Germans. In a bit of cold-bloodedness, the Nazi commander orders Conchis to beat the partisans to death with an unloaded rifle. If he refuses, they will execute the adult males in the village where the partisans were discovered. Of course, we can't be sure how true the story is. Some on the island claim that Conchis' participation with the Nazis was more sinister, and there's no reason to believe his own account of the events won't be self serving.But the result of this actually intriguing question of truth, guilt and responsibility is: a callow English man-child decides that he can kinda, sorta commit to his flighty foreign girlfriend. Shortly after finishing the novel, I thought of it as some literary version of David Fincher's 'The Game,' where Michael Douglas undergoes many trials and tribulations to figure out that he should be less of a jerk and ask the cute blond out on a date. 'The Game,' though, manages to be relatively consistent in its pulpiness. This is actually a bit more like some version of 'Four Weddings and a Funeral,' where the big emotional pay off is that a callow English man-child decides that he can kinda, sorta commit to his flighty foreign girlfriend. (Call if 'Forty Literary Allusions, One Nazy War Crime and an Island.')As much as I was disappointed by the novel, it does have some great moments and does reflect the work of an author with some degree of skill. Which is why I feel the most fair thing I can say is that it's the first novel of a talented writer. However, I think like many first novels, Folwes doesn't succeed to match up his ambition with his literary skill.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      This story is filled with strange and interesting happenings, which could be either psychological mindgames or supernatural events. I was filled with rage and disappointment when I reached the end and realised that all the confusing events surrounding the protagonist were just to teach him to be nice to his girlfriend!!! As I had taken it away with me as holiday reading, I gave the book away to another holidaymaker.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Interesting but rather sick. I understand that it's a book about misogyny and manipulation, but I often felt that those were quite personal to the author (that is, a manipulative misogynist happened to write it). Ugly. This said, a rollicking plot and there were many suspenseful sequences that I devoured. The narrator has a lovely voice and did a rather fab job over 25 hours' worth of utterances, allowing us to overlook his incorrect emphases.
    • 1/5
      I could not stand The Magus! It may be the only book that I actually hate. Those pompous nitwits running around that stupid island playing games with each other! And all the time spouting humanistic gobblygook about the death of God, or whatever they were prattling on about. It has a cult following, but I thought it was overwrought nonsense.
    • 1/5
      I tried but man was it truly boring as fuck
    • 1/5
      Touted as the book that John Lennon said changed his life (citation needed) but all I can say is:

      That's 27 hours I won't get back. Kept waiting for it to get going and then I had spent too much time on it that I just had to see it through.

      Never felt so angry at how bad a book was since The Cradle By Arthur C. Clarke and Ian Gentry Lee.
    • 5/5
      This was a towering edifice of a novel - not in that it's unstable or even hard to attack, just in that it is expertly constructed and that the fact of its existence gives me faith in human ingenuity and intelligence. This is a book that every sensitive and intelligent young man (and there are more than meet the eye) should read.The fact that it was smarter than me (in that I was unable to see what was going on) let me absorb its lessons much more readily. It raised my personal bar (and pointed me in the right direction) for any novels that I may write.
    • 4/5
      this book left a pungent cloud of unease and strangeness about me for at least a week; rather like Murakami, the mans a wizard.
    • 5/5
      This is maybe the most popular of Fowles - an Oscar movie being written after it (Michael Caine, Anthony Quinn).A maze of unanswered questions and unexpected happenings, that could drive anybody crazy; a game of a diabolic mind... with some twin sisters and a guy, on an exotic island in Greece. Another masterpiece of psychology, but a very captivating story in the same time.
    • 5/5
      Great narration. The book itself is great as well and will require more listenings.
    • 5/5
      For the first half of this book I thought it was pretty much the best thing ever. Now it ended and I’m in a bit of shell shock.I strongly believe that this novel would appeal to those in the Da Vinci Code set. It’s plot-driven and stretches one’s credulity until it kind of breaks. One desires, no, one feels that one must understand what is going on. It’s fascinating, well-written and had philosophical moments that had me–sadly indifferent to most philosophy–on the edge of my seat (well, bed, usually, that’s where I read), almost reaching for a highlighter (those who know me know I also don’t do this either).It postures itself to be about humanity, reality and the search for identity, but in the end I found that I was still burning with anger on the protagonist’s behalf, not satisfied, and dully, dumbly confused.Fun times were had with the onslaught of literary, historical and artistic references. Have at; hope you’re better-read than I am!Update: I read this book just over a year ago, but I cannot stop thinking about it. It informs my metaphorical sense of things. For this reason, I'm upping my rating to 5 stars.
    • 2/5
      This book was far too complicated and mystifying for me to truly enjoy it, although it is somewhat engaging along the way. To make any sense of it you'll have to first look up the meaning of the Latin quote with which the book ends.
    • 5/5
      One of the best (and darkest) books I've ever read. A masterpiece of existential fiction that really makes you question everything you think you know. Everyone should read this.
    • 5/5
      I am a woefully impatient reader. I have zero tolerance for wasted words, literary flab, narrative bush beating. I like short books and have been known to dislike long ones. My trite complaint of every other classic I read – Dracula, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, The Turn of the Screw, Lolita, To Kill a Mockingbird – is that they could have, and should have, been shorter. But somehow I fell in love with John Fowles' The Magus, which stretches to some seven hundred pages and took me twenty three hours of solid reading time (according to the Kobo app on my iPad.)It helps that the writing is not at all flabby. Fowles skims the surface of life for the ripest details and uses them to evoke feelings, settings, people. Our narrator, Nicholas, contributes much of the charm; he's a bit egotistical and curt, but you can't help but smile as he dispatches minor characters with damning little epithets – 'spectacles, rather fat, too much lipstick'. He is the listless, angst-ridden teenager who somehow manages never to whine at you or waste your time. When he takes up a teaching post in the Greek Islands, and meets a remarkable old man who invites him to spend each weekend at his house, Nicholas functions as a stand-in for the reader, becoming hypnotised by the mysteries of Conchis' invented realm and constantly hungering for more.Fowles' world is immersive, alluring; brilliantly real and brilliantly unreal. What makes The Magus so enjoyable is the pleasure of being under the spell of a writer who knows what he is doing, and is content to do it without pomp, pretentiousness, or even obvious purpose. Like Nicholas, the reader is blindfolded and led through a labyrinth. Fowles throws in twist after twist; as soon as the reader begins to feel comfortable with the new status quo, the bottom falls out of the story yet again. I have never read a novel that ties itself up in so many knots, and I loved every minute of it.For those who are not as well read as Fowles, it can be difficult to keep one's feet in a sea of allusions to classic plays, novels, myths and works of art. But the relentless references draw our attention to the nature of the story world that Fowles is weaving for us. We can almost feel him mocking Conchis, who denounces fiction as useless, asking 'Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach half a dozen very little truths?' Far from being a meaningless fabrication, The Magus is a novel that self-consciously examines the incredible powers of fiction.So I would highly recommend The Magus: the longest book I have ever read, and the first long book I have ever loved (excluding the later Harry Potter books, which don't count.)
    • 5/5
      My English teacher told me I was ready for this when I was 15. It changed my life in so many ways and without my realising, pushed me into the career that I'm in. I've visited it again and again so many times. Men as Gods; Gods as men. The magic of the Mediterranean and travelling and how we sometimes need to go away to come closer to understanding ourselves. Has always informed my dreams and still does. This book truely became a part of me.Deep down, I have always been Nicholas and I want Conchis to play with my mind as well. Leant my first copy to my best friend 20 years ago and he's still got it and hasn't read it! Leant my second copy to an ex-girlfriend who never gave it back. Leant my third copy to someone who covered in with suntan lotion (you know who you are!).Now, I wait with impatience for the day when my child becomes 15 and I say: I think you are ready for this now.
    • 3/5
      Pretty good book although not my standard fare. I metaphysical mind freak set on a beautiful Greek Island.
    • 5/5
      Mesmorising, addictive, suprising and so rich but a frustrating ending
    • 1/5
      "The smallest hope, a bare continuing to exist, is enough for the anti-hero's future; leave him, says our age, leave him where mankind is in its history, at a crossroads, in a dilemma, with all to lose and only more of the same to win; let him survive, but give him no direction, no reward..."- The Magus.This is the story of Nicholas Urfe, a loner from Oxford who spends a year teaching English on a remote island in Greece. On this island he meets a mysterious cast of characters set on teaching him a moral lesson through dramatics and trickery. This is the worst book that I have read in my life. The characters are flat stereotypes and wholly impossible to like. The plot is an absurd stringing together of amateur sex scenes designed to please the teenage boys that are the obvious target audience of this piece of nonsense. From the countless descriptions of azure water, to the corny junior high school stock characters such as the young, blonde, nymphet identical twins June and Julie, to the comical pseudo-intellectual babble- this book was pure juvenile tedium.
    • 5/5
      Love it when I first read this back in the 1970's. Would have been in a commune in Shropshire and working on a beef rearing farm-whose wife was vegetarian and a founder member of the local CND. Wonder if the marriage lasted? Don't read this if you want naturalistic fiction, this is a Tempest rather then a Richard 3rd read
    • 3/5
      This story was very strange and a little too drawn out.
    • 4/5
      A friend recommended this book to me with a wink and a warning that I would be thoroughly shocked about two-thirds of the way through it. This is a pretty good psychological thriller with wildly surreal situations in it. It's also highly sensual and convincing. I never saw the movie adaptation of it, having been advised not to by that same friend, although I can visualize this story and piece together Nicholas' rapidly deconstructing reality. The most interesting aspect of this story is the complete lack of a convincing "why" - why did these things happen to Nicholas and for what reason? Fowles offers a few plausible explanations, yet moves the story along, forcing the reader to rethink those lines of logic. In the end - and I loved the end, as it felt like a curtain going down on an incomplete scene - readers are still left with that nagging question. A bold gamble, given the scope of this novel. But quite fitting. I'd recommend this book for anyone interested in psychological suspense/thrillers.
    • 1/5
      My dad has a Litmus test for the worthiness of a book: if it doesn't grab his interest in the first 100 pages, it's out. I would have done well to follow that advice with this book. While I admire the insane amount of planning and thinking that must have gone into writing it, The Magus seemed to be overreaching in scope and significance.
      It was really hard to get involved--I found the main character extremely unsympathetic, which of course, later turns out to be half the point. It started getting more interesting in the last fourth of the book, but the only reason I even got that far was that I refused to let it beat me. Even when the man was being tormented, I felt no more than the remotest pity for him. And the end of the book, while I see what the author was going for, was a huge let-down and cop-out.
      It's possibly I'm not "intelligent" enough to enjoy this book, as the previous English teacher wasn't "intelligent" enough for the Godgame. But I'm pretty sure that's just what the author WANTS me to think, and I'm not swallowing it any more than I'm swallowing Conchis's batsh*t, gratuitous manipulations.
    • 5/5
      Loved it then. Loved it again. A true classic. Great narration an unexpected bonus.
    • 2/5
      A painfully frustrating read. Beautifully written and often suspenseful and engrossing. I think some of the philosophizing is less than it appears and seems somewhat dated. But what really bothered me was the frustration of the continual lies that Nicholas is told. The effect on the reader is like a night-long bad dream where you 're trying to get somewhere -- or get away from someone -- and you keep running into obstacles, and the dream gets sidetracked into something else, and you run into obstacles there, too, and on and on and on, until you wake up, exhausted.
    • 4/5
      I loved/hated this book, or should I say loved/hated the characters. The plot twists were frustrating and made it hard to put the book down.