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Lev Grossman Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Lev Grossman
Photo: Lev Grossman - Elena Siebert

Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman Biography

Lev Grossman is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Magicians trilogy—The Magicians, The Magician King, and The Magician's Land—which has been published in thirty countries and adapted as a TV show that ran for five seasons on SYFY. He is also a screenwriter and the author of two children's books, The Golden Swift and The Silver Arrow, and his journalism has appeared in Time, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, among many other places. He lives with his wife and children in New York City.



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Interview

Lev Grossman discusses The Magicians, an original coming-of-age novel for adults, about a young man practicing magic in the real world.

Your previous novel, Codex, is a thriller about a fourteenth-century manuscript and a sinister high-tech computer game. What is it that interests you about the intersection of contemporary life and fantasy?
I think I’ve always been interested in that intersection, even before I had any kind of proper vocabulary for talking about it. Which implies that I have one now, probably wrongly. But let me try to explain what interests me about fantasies and, really, stories in general. When we read books and watch television or movies, we’re seeing representations of people’s lives. And I always wondered, even as a little kid, why does my life, which superficially resembles a life in a story, feel so different from a life in a story? Lives in stories are exciting and vivid and meaningful. Real lives are chaotic and disorganized and frequently boring, and that feeling of meaningfulness comes and goes, out of your control. It’s hard to hang on to. Why doesn’t life feel more like a story? Like a fantasy? I don’t know. But now, at a time in history when we spend so much of our waking life being entertained by stories, I wonder that even more.

Is The Magicians a critique of or an homage to our collective need ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Lev Grossman at BookBrowse
The Bright Sword jacket The Magician's Land jacket The Magician King jacket The Magicians jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Lev Grossman but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Costanza Casati

    Costanza Casati

    Costanza Casati was born in Texas in 1995, grew up in a village in Northern Italy and lived in the UK for five years. Before moving to London, she attended a classical Liceo in Italy, where she studied Ancient Greek, and ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Bright Sword

    Try:
    Clytemnestra
    by Costanza Casati

  • Susanna Clarke

    Susanna Clarke

    Susanna Clarke's debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was first published in more than 34 countries and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian First ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Magicians

    Try:
    Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
    by Susanna Clarke

We recommend 20 similar authors


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