It's 1808 and that Corsican upstart Napoleon is battering the English army
and navy. Enter Mr. Norrell, a fusty but ambitious scholar from the Yorkshire
countryside and the first practical magician in hundreds of years. What better
way to demonstrate his revival of British magic than to change the course of
the Napoleonic wars? Mr. Norrell moves to London to establish his influence in
government circles, devising such powerful illusions as an 11-day blockade of
French ports by English ships fabricated from rainwater. But however skillful
his magic, his vanity provides an Achilles heel, and the differing ambitions
of his more glamorous apprentice, Jonathan Strange, threaten to topple all
that Mr. Norrell has achieved. Susanna Clarke's ingenious first novel, Jonathan
Strange & Mr. Norrell, has the cleverness and lightness of touch of the Harry
Potter series, but is less a fairy tale of good versus evil than a fantastic
comedy of manners, complete with elaborate footnotes, occasional period
spellings, and a dense, lively mythology teeming beneath the narrative.

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