The Magicians

The Magicians is a novel by the American writer Lev Grossman, published in 2009 and set among students of magic in upstate New York.

Quentin gets into Brakebills after an entrance examination he does not understand, and the novel follows his four years there: the dead languages, the hand positions, the practice rooms and the drinking. Magic, in Grossman's version, is a difficult academic discipline rather than a gift, and the college is a small, intense world in which the students pair off, compete and get bored. Quentin's problem is not that he cannot do it. It is that the thing he has wanted since childhood turns out to be ordinary once he has it, and that the fantasy land he read about at eleven may be real. The last third of the book takes him and his friends out of the college and into Fillory itself, and what they find there was not written for children.

The novel began a trilogy that continued with The Magician King and The Magician's Land.