Net of Magic: Wonders and Deceptions in India

by Lee A. Siegel

Vast like the subcontinent itself and teeming with outrageous and exotic characters, Net of Magic is an enthralling voyage through the netherworld of Indian magic. Lee Siegel, scholar and magician, uncovers the age-old practices of magic in sacred rites and rituals and unveils the contemporary world of Indian magic of street and stage entertainers.

Siegel's journeys take him from ancient Sanskrit texts to the slums of New Delhi to find remnants of a remarkable magical tradition. In the squalid settlement of Shadipur, he is initiated into a band of Muslim street conjurers and performs as their shill while they tutor him in their con and craft. Siegel also becomes acquainted with Hindu theatrical magicians, who claim descent from court illusionists and now dress as maharajahs to perform a repertoire of tricks full of poignant kitsch and glitz.

Masterfully using a panoply of narrative sleights to recreate the magical world of India, Net of Magic intersperses travelogue, history, ethnography, and fiction. Siegel's vivid, often comic tale is crowded with shills and stooges, tourists and pickpockets, snake charmers and fakirs. Among the cast of characters are Naseeb, a poor Muslim street magician who guides Siegel into the closed circle of itinerant performers; the Industrial Magician, paid by a bank, who convinces his audience to buy traveler's checks by making twenty-rupee notes disappear; the Government Magician, who does a trick with condoms to encourage family planning; P. C. Sorcar, Jr., the most celebrated Indian stage magician; and the fictive Professor M. T. Bannerji, the world's greatest magician, who assumes various guises over a millennium of Indian history and finally arrives in the conjuring capital of the world—Las Vegas.

Like Indra's net—the web of illusion in which Indian performers ensnare their audience—Net of Magic captures the reader in a seductive portrayal of a world where deception is celebrated and lies are transformed into compelling and universal truths.

Genres: Magic, Travel, Nonfiction, India

464 pages, Hardcover

First published June 11, 1991

About the author

Lee A. Siegel is a novelist and professor of religion at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is not related to the critic Lee Siegel. In 1988 Siegel was a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow [1]. He has received numerous fellowships and grants including five Senior Research Fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies and the Smithsonian Institute (1979, 1983, 1987, 1991, 1996), four research grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council (1982, 1985, 1987, 1990) and one from the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies. In addition Professor Siegel has been two Presidential Awards for Excellence in Teaching (1986 and 1996). He has been a scholar-in-residence at the Rockefeller Foundation, and twice at the Bellagio Study Center (1990 and 2003). He also was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College of Oxford University (1997).
Siegel has published a number of novels including: Who Wrote the Book of Love, Laughing Matters, and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his novel, Love in a Dead Language. His most recent novel is Love and the Incredibly Old Man (2008).
His son is film actor Sebastian Siegel.

Reviews

[Dave Peticolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to even describe this book about Indian street and stage magicians, but I sure did like it. It's part history, part fiction, part travelogue and wholly fascinating.

[Neven]

50 pages in, I'm finding the style this is written in—uneven, verbose, self-congratulatory, trying too hard to be poetic—severely annoying. On top of it, the stories Siegel recounts early on just aren't very interesting. Maybe it gets better after another, oh, 300 pages, but I won't find out.

[Bart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite surprisingly for such an accomplished text, the Field Notes on Magic, at page 423, are this book's most enchanting part.