Christopher Priest's novel tells the story of two stage magicians locked in a fatal feud. Set in England in the late 1800s, the book follows an epistolary in structure — acting as a collection of diaries kept by the protagonists. The title derives from the magicians' assertion that a stage illusion has three parts: the setup, the performance, and the effect also known as "the prestige."
While The Prestige received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for best fiction and the World Fantasy Award for best novel, audiences may best remember this work for its 2006 film adaptation. Christopher Nolan directed the movie starring Hugh Jackman as Robert Angier and Christian Bale as both Alfred Borden and his shadow twin.
