I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times book review, and this is the book review podcast.

We're officially off for the holidays, but we couldn't help but give you a little end-of-year treat.

Earlier this fall, our reporter Alexandra Alter

wrote a wonderful profile of the author, Susanna Clark,

upon the anniversary of her tremendous fantasy novel,

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

Alexandra visited Clark at her cottage

in the English countryside

and recorded a short episode on that trip that

we're happy to share with you all now.

You know, when some people think about fantasy, they think about, you know, dragons and fairies

and elves, and it all seems so escapist and magical. But I think what some of the

best fantasy fiction does is it makes us look more closely at reality and think about it in a

different way. I'm Alexandra Alter, and I write about books, publishing, and the literary world for

The New York Times. Twenty years ago, the novelist Susanna Clark published a really unusual book that changed the

fantasy landscape almost overnight. The book is an 800-page historical fantasy novel titled

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Nourl, and it's set in Regency era England. It tells the story of these

two rival magicians who are trying

to revive the lost art of English magic. It was a huge bestseller that went on to sell more

than four million copies. And when the novel came out, it launched Clark, who at the time was in her

mid-40s and working as a cookbook editor, as one of Britain's greatest fantasy novelists.

People compared her to C.S. Lewis and Tolkien

...