Eisenheim the Illusionist by Steven Millhauser

The Illusionist or the Prestige. Which do you prefer?

For a story packed with exposition and styled like a historical narrative, Eisenheim the Illusionist by Steven Millhauser somehow manages to stay utterly captivating from start to finish. Normally, that kind of heavy detail can bog down a short-story but in this case, it works pretty much flawlessly. Millhauser's brisk pacing keeps things moving at a steady clip with a constant sense of mystery and wonder swirling around Eisenheim, eastern Europe's most legendary illusionist at the dawn of the 20th century. 

Despite being written like a faux-biography, the story never comes across as a dull historical treatise. In fact, it embraces the illusion of truth so convincingly that you almost find yourself Googling whether Eisenheim was a real person. Spoiler alert: he wasn’t. That’s part of the story's magic though. Millhauser playfully blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction in a way that mirrors the very illusions Eisenheim performs. The result is a kind of literary sleight-of-hand that leaves you questioning art as illusory. 

The 2006 film adaptation, The Illusionist, starring Edward Norton, often gets overlooked because it had the misfortune of coming out the same year as Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. At the time, I remember thinking The Illusionist was actually quite solid, even slightly underrated. The two films inevitably drew comparisons, but it never felt fair. Sure, they both feature magicians but also tell very different stories. The Prestige is a twisty rivalry thriller, while The Illusionist is more about mythmaking and the paradoxical nature of art as truth. 

Ultimately, Eisenheim the Illusionist is far more than a tale about a gifted magician at the height of his powers. Through Eisenheim’s spellbinding performances that seem to defy the laws of physics, the story explores how illusion can reveal deeper truths. Just as the magician manipulates human perception, Millhauser himself becomes a literary illusionist, constructing a narrative that plays with ambiguity, expectation, and the reader’s sense of what is real. In doing so, he invites us to consider that very good art is simialr to a magic trick, acting as both deception and revelation. This inherent paradox is what makes the story so haunting and enchanting at the same time, even after after the final curtain call.