subject and his hits ... are on the bull's eye" (Sunday Telegraph) "A deliciously toothsome celebration of wanton story-telling ... Before one quite realises what is happening, one finds oneself no less avid for meanings and no less starving amid a plethora of clues than is Nicholas himself" (Sunday Times) "A splendidly sustained piece of mystification ... such as could otherwise only have been devised by a literary team fielding the Marquis de Sade, Arthur Edward Waite, Sir James Frazer, Gurdjieff, Madame Blavatsky, C.G. Jung, Aleister Crowley, and Franz Kafka" (Financial Times) The novel was featured on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels: It ranked as No. 71 on the Readers' List and No. 93 on the Critics' List of the top 100 novels. Representation in other media In Jasper Fforde's comic detective novel The Well of Lost Plots (part of the Thursday Next series), The Magus wins the "Most Incomprehensible Plot" Award at the annual "Bookie" Awards, the awards programme that characters in literature give one another. Film adaptation The novel was adapted for film with a screenplay by Fowles, directed by Guy Green, and released in 1968. It starred Michael Caine as Nicholas Urfe, Anthony Quinn as Maurice Conchis, Anna Karina as Alison, Candice Bergen as Lily / Julie, and Julian Glover as Anton. It was filmed on the island of Majorca. The adaptation generally was considered a failure as film; when Woody Allen was asked if he would do anything differently with his life, he said he'd do "everything exactly the same, with the exception of watching The Magus". Caine said that it was one of the worst films in which he had been involved because no one knew what it was about. Despite the critical failure, the film was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography. BBC Radio 4 broadcast in 2016 a dramatization by Adrian Hodges, with Charles Dance in the role of Conchis. In 2020, a new television miniseries adaptation of The Magus was announced to be in development at Neal Street Productions, with Johan Renck being looked at to direct based on a screenplay written by Tom Edge. References External links John Fowles – The Web Site 1965 fantasy novels 1965 British novels 1977 British novels British novels adapted into films English-language books Novels by John Fowles Novels set in Greece Novels set on islands Jonathan Cape books Postmodern novels