Customer Reviews

Sorcerer's Apprentice

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Tahir Shah is an Englishman of Afghani/Scottish descent who writes what may be a new form: The eccentric maybe true, maybe not true, but true on a metaleval travel book. What I mean by that is that, while the details of his day-to-day experiences may be exaggerated and padded to make the book work with a coherent theme, the facts about the country remain true. I genuinely enjoyed this second book of his that I have read. In it, an 11-year-boy meets the guardian of his ancestor's tomb, learns a bit of magic, grows up, travels to India to tour and meet the guardian again, hoping to learn more slight of hand illusion magic. From there he is referred to his teacher's teacher, who is definitely the archytypical teacher as sadist. As Mr. Tahir learns the craft, we learn a great deal about India, about the travelling magicians, godmen, sadhus, charletans, etc. I found the book engaging from beginning to end and highly recommend it.

This book has one of the finest first chapters I've ever read: one day a man from India shows up at an English boy's house to protect him. Note that the book is non-fiction. The rest of the book is how the author (who was that boy) many years later decides to go to India to learn how to be a magician like the man who came to him. At times the author seems to purposely act too credulous and think odd thoughts, to the point where you feel he's being that way in order to make for a more mystical read. He's also a bit disingenuous, in that the book implies he gives up a staid life for adventure; judging from his other books, he has never been too bored or boring. It's nonetheless a fun read, as he goes through many peculiar experiences and learns all sorts of strange knowledge about magical tricks and India itself. A surprising and wonderful (though sometimes slow) book.

It's a highly entertaining book, full of great stories and some interesting insights into parts of India's culture. But, like the godmen whose stories he tells and whose secrets he gives away, it doesn't amount to much more than entertainment.

The reason that the book is so easily comparable to a novel (cf. other reviews) is that it really has been written like one. The dialogue is almost certainly fictitious and a lot of the events, I believe, have been amended to make better reading. Yes, the book flows and it's a pleasure to read, but perhaps it shouldn't... some of the grit that I was expecting is conspicuously absent.

As much as I enjoyed the book I think that it was missing some of that squalor and detail and that could have made it a truly brilliant book. The photgraphs inside the book are marvelous and Mr. Shah does touch on some issues that are truly heartbreaking (his experience with the witch-hunt, for example); but he never seems to get to the core of the connection between the misery and the illusions.

The book bounces between quaint travelogue of aspiring illusionist and notes from a naive westerner in India (some of his cries of indignation at the conmen he comes across make him sound like a complete fool: I hope they're fictional). But between that there are moments of brilliance and I won't deny that I was entranced by the book.

I certainly recommend it, you'll be telling the stories that you read for weeks; just don't expect any... magic.

Shah soundly and completely defeats any notion of true wizardry-- this at a time when Harry Potter is sparking in kids the idea that they might have access to the bizarre world of magic. It's odd that his description of the Rationalists is kept to a few pages as he describes this movement that literally "pulls the carpet out from under" the sadhus and godmen of India. Has he no obligation to admit his allegiances? He does what all magicians would screw-up their face at-- he reveals his tricks, and theirs, and everybody elses.

Some of the stories are truly enjoyable, and the kid Bhalu is endearing. The Sorcerer's Apprentice serves as a collection of strange but true stories that reveal alleged inner-workings of Indian culture. But are the stories really true? Are we even allowed to ask? These are questions that Shah attempts to dispell in the beginning of the book.

Initially I picked it up hoping to find a Casteneda-like description of a world of sorcery-- instead I got the anti-shaman-- jumping up and down in the front of the magic show saying "I know how they do it!".

Don't even think about not buying this book! It is so good that my husband started reading it after I was halfway through, and he was STEALING it from me by hiding in the bathroom with it.

Wonderfully engaging and affectionate look at Indian 'magic' Although this is not a novel it reads with the fluidity of good fiction and, if you didn't know otherwise, you would assume that is what this book is. In fact it is the story of a young man's journey through the world of Indian streetcorner trickery and 'miracles'. As a young boy the author was visited in England by an Indian historically linked to his family. Having been introduced by this man to the world of illusion, and its borders with magic and religion, a spark is set off in Shah's imagination. As a young man he sets off to find his teacher and in the process learns of the mythical conjuror Hakim Feroze who he must track down in order to learn the nature of miracles. This wonderful book takes us on a memorable journey through modern India with all its superstitions, scams and sorcery. The narrative is packed with oddball characters reminiscent of John Irving's finest and Shah keeps the pace fast with a fine eye for the comical and absurd. If there has been a better book published this year I would love to know what it is.

Brilliant is a word I'd like to use to describe this book on India and the day in a life of a student of magic under a fabled master.
Dont expect any great magician secrets to be divulged here but be prepared to take a journey into an india that no other travel book can even come close to.
Living in India I too have taken a reality check after reading this book. Its pure fascination how the country operates at ground level and the stories that tahir works into his travelogues are unbelievable at first but when you realise that this is not fiction, you cant help but just keep on devouring the pages hoping theres some magic rubbed off into the book which will never make it end.
Thank you Tahir for this journey, I cant even start to think what you've been through is truly amazing.

When I purchased this book, due to the title of the book, I expected the book to have an esoteric, occult, flavor and to describe some of the esoteric practices of India - perhaps something along the lines of the books on Aghora, given the illustration on the cover where the individual looks as if he were a devotee of Kali. To me the word "sorcery" represents working in some way with consciousness and energy. This book has nothing of the sort. It is all about performing illusions and is in a way a collection of tricks done by street magicians. If you like street magic, you may enjoy this book. Some of the tricks are based on outright deception, as in the slight-of-hand, while others may involve some knowlede of chemistry, physics, anatomy and psychology. You may feel inspired to get one of those Harry Potter science experiments kits or similar that begin by teaching you how to pass a boiled egg through a glass bottle. You may then progress onto other illusions as performed by David Blaine, Derren Brown or Chris Angel.

I did find the writing style of the author rather entertaining and at time rather funny, which helped to swallow some sad facts about the life of the poor people in India (as in beggars renting babies so that they could make money - the book also has pictures of a "baby dealer" in Calcutta), about the way people look at and treat widows, and few other beliefs and customs that made me appreciate all over again all the comforts I have and sometimes take for granted.

I was amused by one of the reviews - how much squalor and grit could you want? This book described the lowest classes in India living in absolute squalor and poverty, scraping a living in the most ingenious ways, you get a picture of how strong the human spirit really is, even in the direst circumstances. This is the background of the story about Tahir Shah's training in magic and the art of illusion. Fascinating story, appeals to the cynic in me who believes that most "spirituality" is smoke and mirrors. anyway, I highly recommend this book - what an adventure. Loved the whole story from his childhood in England to his training in illusion and magic in India, and then his journey through India.

The English-born son of an aristocratic Afghan (Pashtun) family, Shah became interested in magic as a boy, introduced to it by a clansman, Hafiz Jhan. Jhan was forced to give up his own study of the illusionist's art when he came into his legacy - the guardianship of the tomb of Shah's great-great-great grandfather, a warlord - a duty he had temporarily forsaken to save young Shah from a premonition of an early and undignified death.

Already this story of Shah's Indian sojourn and apprenticeship is fantastical, enchanting, exotic and hilarious and the rest of the book easily lives up to its stranger-than-fiction promise. Shah himself - the naïve foreigner, wide-eyed, sometimes arrogant, self-deprecating, tongue-in-cheek, observant but sometimes not observant enough, curious and determined - keeps us guessing. How much is real, how much is trickery?

The first of three sections of "Sorcerer's Apprentice" describes the background story and Shah's early travels in India visiting his ancestor's tomb and Hafiz Jhan and looking for Jhan's teacher, India's greatest conjuror, Hakim Feroze, in Calcutta. He is robbed by tricksters on the famously dangerous Farakka Express and interviews widows made outcast by a husband's demise, now clustered in the thousands by the sacred Ganges, waiting for their own death.

Finding Feroze by happenstance, Shah embarks on a grueling course for the second part of his story. He digs trenches with a teaspoon, sorts rice and lentils blindfolded, learns to regurgitate on command, reads voraciously. Feroze, dapper, aristocratic, diabolically demanding, wakes his student in the middle of the night to answer arcane questions while balanced, blindfolded, between two chairs.

Feroze also shows him the illusionist's tricks, exposing the secrets of spoon bending, plunging a hand into molten lead, stopping and restarting the pulse. He hands Shah a ball of tin foil and tells him it will soon become too hot to hold, which it does. Feroze explains the trick - a rubbing with mercuric nitrate.

" 'Mercuric nitrate?' I said. 'Isn't that incredibly poisonous?'
'Yes, as a matter of fact it is,' said Feroze coldly. 'It's lethal. The toxicity is the drawback of the trick. But that's irrelevant for now.'" Somewhat worse is the trick of raising Shah's body temperature to 104 degrees.

At last the pupil is ready for his "journey of observation," a trip across India observing godmen, healers and fortune-tellers; illusionists who pass their art off as miracle. Shah has already made smaller journeys around Calcutta. Guided by a resourceful rickshawalla, he has observed the workings of Calcutta's underclasses: the goldsmith shop sweepers who pay for the privilege, then sift the dirt for gold dust, selling the remains to a still-poorer class who sift again; beggars who pay to take care of another's cow so passers-by will pay to feed it; childless beggar women who rent babies; men who steal the corpses of paupers to sell their skeletons to Western medical schools.

For section three Shah is joined by a 12-year-old con man, an ingenious guide who knows all the scams. With the boy's aid, he saves an old woman from a witch's fate, discovers the secret of bloodless surgery, watches water turn to petrol, sees tulips nod as a godman passes, meets the world's richest man, learns how to stop not just a pulse but the heartbeat itself, witnesses a duel of miracles, and much more, exposing the secrets of venerated scam artists in their temples and tents, while maintaining a aura of surreal enchantment.

Shah reveals not only the tricks but the real marvels of Indian life - the amazing resourcefulness of poverty, where nothing goes to waste, everything is recycled and recycled again (Shah even visits a restaurant where all the dishes are made from discarded food), where practicality and ruthlessness coexist with mystical gullibility, and the ordinary Western reader is amazed, appalled and humbled.

Funny, illuminating and very different, Shah's first book-length account is itself a marvel.