The Man Who Was Magic: A Fable Of Innocence
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
In a world where illusion and deception reign, a genuinely magical man arrives in a city of conjurers and tricksters, and his very authenticity makes him the most dangerous outsider of all. The Man who was Magic by Paul Gallico is a tender and allegorical fable that chronicles the journey of Adam, a young man possessing real, wondrous magic, who wanders into a community of magicians whose tricks are based entirely on artifice and sleight of hand. His true gifts — making flowers genuinely bloom from thin air and conversing with animals — are met not with wonder, but with suspicion, hostility, and fear. The novel unfolds with the quiet warmth and moral clarity of a parable, asking uncomfortable questions about why humanity so often punishes what it cannot understand. Gallico, celebrated for his extraordinary ability to illuminate the human condition through deceptively simple narratives — as seen in The Snow Goose and Mrs Harris Goes to Paris — brings his signature blend of gentle whimsy and profound emotional depth to this story. The tale operates on multiple levels, functioning simultaneously as a charming fantasy and a pointed meditation on conformity, the persecution of the innocent, and the cost of authentic virtue in a world built on pretence. Rich with compassion and suffused with a melancholy wisdom, it leaves the reader to ponder a quietly devastating question: in a society of fakes, is there any place for the genuinely miraculous?
Author: Paul Gallico
Format: Hardback
Published: 1966, Heinemann: London
Genre: Fiction
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
In a world where illusion and deception reign, a genuinely magical man arrives in a city of conjurers and tricksters, and his very authenticity makes him the most dangerous outsider of all. The Man who was Magic by Paul Gallico is a tender and allegorical fable that chronicles the journey of Adam, a young man possessing real, wondrous magic, who wanders into a community of magicians whose tricks are based entirely on artifice and sleight of hand. His true gifts — making flowers genuinely bloom from thin air and conversing with animals — are met not with wonder, but with suspicion, hostility, and fear. The novel unfolds with the quiet warmth and moral clarity of a parable, asking uncomfortable questions about why humanity so often punishes what it cannot understand. Gallico, celebrated for his extraordinary ability to illuminate the human condition through deceptively simple narratives — as seen in The Snow Goose and Mrs Harris Goes to Paris — brings his signature blend of gentle whimsy and profound emotional depth to this story. The tale operates on multiple levels, functioning simultaneously as a charming fantasy and a pointed meditation on conformity, the persecution of the innocent, and the cost of authentic virtue in a world built on pretence. Rich with compassion and suffused with a melancholy wisdom, it leaves the reader to ponder a quietly devastating question: in a society of fakes, is there any place for the genuinely miraculous?