The Amulet of Samarkand
In an alternate London where the British Empire runs on magic and magicians govern everybody else, a boy named Nathaniel is apprenticed to a mid-ranking magician.
About
The Amulet of Samarkand is a young adult fantasy novel by the English writer Jonathan Stroud, published by Doubleday in September 2003 and the first book of the Bartimaeus Sequence.
The setting is an alternate London in which the British Empire has been built on magic and the people who command it govern everyone else. Nathaniel is five when he is apprenticed to Arthur Underwood, a middling magician in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and ten when he is presented to a gathering of his elders and humiliated in front of them, including the formidable Simon Lovelace. His answer is to summon a djinni, Bartimaeus, and order him to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from Lovelace, a task that puts both of them in the middle of a struggle for power among magicians. Bartimaeus, who has been doing this work for a very long time, has opinions of his own about all of it.
The novel is named after an artifact said to have been made in the Central Asian city of Samarkand.
Book details
- Author
- Jonathan Stroud
- First published
- 2003
- Series
- Bartimaeus, book 1
- Subgenre
- Young adult fantasy, Historical fantasy
- Primary genre
- Fantasy
- Tags
- No tags for this book.
- Reading order
- Also on this shelf: The Golem's Eye (book 2), Ptolemy's Gate (book 3), The Ring of Solomon (book 4)
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