Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman at the 2011 Texas Book Festival.

Lev Grossman (born June 26, 1969) is an American novelist and journalist, notably the author of the novels Warp (1997), Codex (2004), The Magicians (2009) and The Magician King (2011). He is a senior writer and book critic for TIME.

Writing

Grossman has written for The New York Times, Wired, Salon.com, Lingua Franca, Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York, The Wall Street Journal, and The Village Voice. He has served as a member of the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle and as the chair of the Fiction Awards Panel.

In writing for Time, he has also covered the consumer electronics industry, reporting on video games, blogs, viral videos and Web comics like Penny Arcade and Achewood. In 2006, he traveled to Japan to cover the unveiling of the Wii console. He has interviewed Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman, Joan Didion, Jonathan Franzen, J.K. Rowling, and Johnny Cash. He wrote one of the earliest pieces on Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. A piece written by Grossman on the game Halo 3 was criticized for casting gamers in an "unfavorable light." Grossman was also the author of the Time Person of the Year 2010 feature article on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

In 1997, in response to his novel Warp receiving largely negative customer reviews, he submitted fake reviews to Amazon using false names. He then recounted these actions in an essay titled "Terrors of the Amazon".

Personal life

Grossman is the twin brother of video game designer and novelist Austin Grossman, and brother of sculptor Bathsheba Grossman, and the son of the poet Allen Grossman and the novelist Judith Grossman. He is an alumnus of Lexington High School and Harvard College. Grossman attended a Ph.D. program in comparative literature for three years at Yale University, but left before completing his dissertation. He lives in Brooklyn with a daughter named Lily from a previous marriage and his second wife, Sophie Gee, whom he married in early 2010.

Writings

Grossman’s New York Times bestseller The Magicians was published in hardcover in August 2009. The paperback edition was made available on May 25, 2010. The Washington Post called it “Exuberant and inventive...Fresh and compelling...a great fairy tale.” The New York Times said the book "could crudely be labeled a Harry Potter for adults," injecting mature themes into fantasy literature.

The Magicians is a contemporary dark fantasy about Quentin Coldwater, an unusually gifted young man who obsesses over Fillory, the magical land of his favorite childhood books. Unexpectedly admitted to Brakebills, a secret, exclusive college of magic in upstate New York (an amalgam of Bannerman's Castle and Olana), Quentin receives an education in the craft of modern sorcery. After graduation, he and his friends discover that Fillory is real.

The Magicians won the 2010 Alex Award, given to ten adult books that are appealing to young adults, and the 2011 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

In August 2011, The Magician King, the sequel to The Magicians, was published. The Magician King returns readers to the magical land of Fillory, where Quentin and his friends are now kings and queens. The Chicago Tribune said The Magician King was "The Catcher in the Rye for devotees of alternative universes" and that "Grossman has created a rare, strange and scintillating novel." It was an Editor's Choice pick of The New York Times, who called it "[A] serious, heartfelt novel [that] turns the machinery of fantasy inside out." The Boston Globe said "The Magician King is a rare achievement, a book that simultaneously criticizes and celebrates our deep desire for fantasy."

Bibliography

• Warp, New York: St. Martin's Griffin/Macmillan, 1997 ISBN 978-0312170592
• Codex, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004. ISBN 978-0151010660
• The Magicians, New York: Viking/Penguin, 2009. ISBN 978-0670020553 (hardcover); Plume/Penguin, 2010. ISBN 9780452296299 (trade paperback)
• The Magician King, New York: Viking/Penguin, published August 10, 2011. ISBN 9780670022311.

External links

• Official site
• Official Site for The Magicians and The Magician King
• CNN.com Interview about The Magician King
• Interview with The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog
• A.V. Club Interview about The Magician King
• The Year of Mathemagical Thinking
• Interview with Lev Grossman on the Fantasy Book Review
• Lev Grossman describes the process of Writing The Magician King
• Lev Grossman at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database