We caught up with Time book critic Lev Grossman Wednesday night at a party celebrating the publication of his third novel, The Magicians, and when we found a moment, we pulled him aside and asked for his take on the emergence of a culture that enabled him to take a straight-up fantasy novel—the kind of book that would’ve sat comfortably on a book shelf next to Charles de Lint twenty-some years ago (a formative reading period for Grossman and your senior editor both)—and see it published as literary fiction by Viking…
Literary street cred doesn’t necessarily keep The Magicians out of consideration for (science fiction and) fantasy’s top honors, either: A novel Grossman cites as a significant inspiration, Susanna Clarke‘s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, won both the Hugo and the World Fantasy Award, and was shorlisted for the Nebula, as were The Handmaid’s Tale, Mary Reilly, and Cloud Atlas before it. And it was only last year that Michael Chabon‘s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union won both the Hugo and the Nebula. So we’re not going to be the least bit surprised if we see Grossman on any of those ballots next year; the book’s that good.
(You know who else has a World Fantasy Award? Haruki Murakami. We’re just saying. )