The Prestige

by Christopher Priest

The events of the past are related through the diaries of 19th century magicians Rupert Angier and Alfred Borden. The diaries are read by their great-grandchildren, Kate Angier and Andrew Westley (born Nicholas Borden) who meet in the present day, with the two diary accounts being interspersed with events of Kate's and Andrew's framing story throughout the novel. The central plot focuses on a feud between the magicians, begun in the fledgling years of their careers when Borden disrupts a fake seance being conducted by Angier and his wife after having conducted a previous one for one of Borden's relatives (Borden was upset that they were presenting it as real when he realized it was in truth an illusion). During a scuffle, Angier's pregnant wife Julia is thrown to the ground, resulting in a miscarriage. The two men are mutually antagonistic for many years afterwards as they rise to become world-renowned stage magicians, with the feud affecting the later generations of their families to come.

Borden develops a teleportation act called "The Transported Man", and an improved version named "The New Transported Man", which appears to move him from one closed cabinet to another in the blink of an eye without appearing to pass through the intervening space. The act seems to defy physics and puts all previous magic acts to shame. The reader learns that Alfred Borden is actually not one man but two: identical twins named Albert and Frederick who share the identity of "Alfred Borden" secretly to ensure their professional success with "The New Transported Man". Angier suspects that Borden uses a double, but dismisses the idea because he thinks it is too easy.

Angier desperately tries to equal Borden's success. With the help of the acclaimed inventor Nikola Tesla, Angier develops an act called "In a Flash", which produces a similar result through a starkly different method. Tesla's device teleports a human being from one place to another by creating an exact physical duplicate at the required destination, into which the person's consciousness is instantly transmitted thus leaving the original subject behind. Because of this method, Angier is forced to devise a way to conceal the original (in order to preserve the illusion) whenever the trick is performed. He clinically refers to these near-lifeless shells in his diary as "the prestiges".

Angier's new act is as successful as Borden's. The infuriated and obsessed Borden attempts to discover how "In a Flash" is performed. During one performance he breaks into the backstage area and turns off the power to Angier's device, mistakenly believing the generator powering it is about to catch fire and turn the theatre ablaze. The subsequent teleportation is incomplete, and both the duplicated Angier and the "prestige" Angier survive as separate persons after this incident, but the original feels increasingly weak while the duplicate seems to lack physical substance. The original Angier fakes his own death as part of a previous plan to put behind his public persona of a magician, and returns as the heir to his family estate of Caldlow House without any publicity. While there, he becomes terminally ill.

Angier had discovered Borden's secret prior to the accident that created his duplicate. Now alienated from the world by his ghostly form and consumed with thoughts of revenge, the Angier duplicate attacks one of the twins before a performance. However, Borden's apparent poor health and the duplicate Angier's resurgent sense of morality prevent the assault from becoming murder. It is implied that this particular Borden twin dies a few days later, and the incorporeal Angier travels to meet the corporeal Angier, now living as the 14th Earl of Colderdale. They come into possession of Borden's diary courtesy of a disgruntled third party in need of money, but publish it without revealing the twins' secret. Shortly afterwards, the corporeal Angier dies and his ghostly duplicate uses Tesla's device one last time to teleport himself into the body; hoping that either he will reanimate it and become whole again, or kill himself instantly and so reunite with his other self in death. In the final section of the novel it is revealed to Kate Angier and Andrew Westley that in Caldlow House, some form of Rupert Angier has continued to survive to the present day.