Book review: The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar

Leave it to me to encounter a writer that virtually every child and the majority of parents and teachers have already been reading for decades when he decides to publish his first book for adults almost 30 years after the release of Holes, the book that made Louis Sachar internationally famous. Still, that’s what happened, and while my ignorance and neglect may be unforgivable, at least I can say that I’m happy to have started setting things right, because The Magician of Tiger Castle is a little delight.

Anatole, our narrator, is an American tourist visiting the castle of what was once the Kingdom of Esquaveta, where a tour guide teaches him of ‘the Whispering King… a treacherous queen… a beautiful princess who was abducted on her wedding night’ and a dungeon that housed he same prisoner for a hundred years. Except the tour guide doesn’t know what he’s talking about: Anatole only spent about 92 years in that dungeon; the Whispering king didn’t whisper because he was so powerful that he didn’t need to raise his voice, but because a potion had rendered his voice comically shrill; and the princess wasn’t abducted. The queen was possibly treacherous, though.

What actually happened is that, less than a month before her arranged wedding to Prince Dalrympl of Oxatania, Princess Tullia of Esquaveta declared her love for the young and gifted apprentice scribe, Pito. The queen wants to pump her full of opium to ensure compliance, but the king turns to his trusted magician to compose a memory potion that will erase all thoughts and feelings for Pito from Tullia’s mind. Out come a load of jars full of urine, and with them a simultaneously comical and wise contemplation of the evolution of contemporary medicine. While the potion succeeds, Anatole’s intentions change for two reasons: he grows attached to Pito; and he finds out that Dalrympl is the same evil nobleman who caused the death of Anatole’s own beloved. When Anatole chooses to do the right thing, he sets off a chain of consequences that echo into the present day.

In Sachar’s own words, the reason that The Magician of Tiger Castle is a novel for grown-ups is the fact that its narrator is a 40-year-old (well, sort of) rather than a child, which ‘is not a good idea’ for a children’s book. If, however, we overlook or disregard this view, then Sachar’s latest seems like a novel that will be enjoyed by people of all ages. After all, who doesn’t like magicians, strong-willed princesses, evil princes, forbidden love, tigers, jars full of urine, drunken explorers and immortal mice? If the answer to that question is you, then I worry for you. If not, you’ll enjoy this book.