Recommendations

Books Like Jonathan Strange

Two English magicians in the Napoleonic era attempt to restore magic to England — but the fairy they summon has other plans

Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell takes place in an alternate England of the early 19th century where magic once existed and has been absent for 300 years. When Mr Norrell — a reclusive, antisocial scholar who has hoarded every book of magic in England — makes a statue choir sing in York Cathedral, he becomes the first practical magician in centuries. He is joined, reluctantly, by Jonathan Strange, a gentleman with a natural gift for it. As they work to restore English magic and assist Wellington's campaign against Napoleon, they attract the attention of the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair — a fairy from the old world who has been waiting. If the meticulous world-building, the ironic Victorian prose, the deep mythology Clarke invented from nothing, and the slow-building dread of the fairy gripped you, these eight picks go to the same place.