Excerpt from The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

1

Homecoming

So here I sit, dressed like a typical American tourist, sipping a cappuccino at an outdoor table in an authentic medieval village. I can see the turrets of Tiger Castle in the distance, silhouetted against the red morning sky. I break off a piece of my almond croissant and place it inside the front pouch of my hoodie.

My hands are bruised, and I think I may have sprained my left wrist. The street here is paved with cobblestones, all of different shapes and sizes. In places, there are significant gaps between the stones. I doubt I was the first person to stumble and fall. My dignity suffered the greatest harm.

I suppose the street is kept like this for authenticity, but five hundred years ago there wouldn't have been coffee, or chocolate. Only the popolo grasso, or "fat people," could afford such luxuries. The popolo minuto-"little people"-ate mostly bread, ale, and whatever greens they managed to grow.

Also, a shop wasn't a separate entity then, but part of the craftsman's home. A craftsman worked in the front room, and the family slept together in the back room. (Only the popolo grasso could afford privacy.) The craftsman would lower his shutter outward toward the street to create a display table for his wares.

These cobblestones could well be the original stones, but five hundred years ago, the spaces between the stones were regularly refilled with a claylike dirt. After a heavy rain, we'd have to strap wooden planks to the bottoms of our shoes to keep the mud off.


I took a tour of Tiger Castle yesterday. According to our tour guide, the tigers are well cared for and are fed a scientific blend of meat and nutritional supplements. In 1523, the tigers ate live animals, including goats, pigs, sheep, horses, and, of course, the occasional human.

It wasn't called Tiger Castle then, but simply the Castle, or perhaps the Esquavetian Castle. The kingdom of Esquaveta no longer exists.

As our tour guide led us along the winding corridors and up and down the stairs, she told tales of some of the people who had lived there. There was the Whispering King, a man so powerful he only needed to whisper. She also spoke of a treacherous queen who killed one king to marry another. And she related the tragic tale of a beautiful princess who was abducted on her wedding night and murdered.

I was disappointed that she never mentioned the great magician Anatole, but I suppose it was to be expected. History isn't written by the conquered. Besides, these days magicians are regarded as nothing more than entertaining tricksters. In the 1500s, science and magic were virtually indistinguishable. Gunpowder was created out of animal dung. Was that magic or science? If sand could be turned into glass, why couldn't it also be turned into gold?

I was surprised to see the enormous glass elephant. Considering how many times the castle had been conquered, I would have thought it had long been shattered.

The guide pointed out the entrance to a secret passageway, but to everyone's disappointment, we weren't allowed to venture in. She claimed it was too dangerous.

Everyone's worried about lawsuits these days. If I could make it through the passage, then surely the others on the tour could have too. I was probably the least agile of our group.

The tour guide also led us down to the dungeon, where she switched off the lights-yes, there's electricity now-and she made us experience thirty seconds of total darkness. She spoke of a prisoner who'd been locked in the dungeon for one hundred years! She described this prisoner as a kind of holy man.


I'm drinking coffee now, but I used to be a tea drinker; some might even call me a tea snob, though I prefer the term connoisseur. After just one sip, I could have told you not only the variety of the tea but where it was grown, at what altitude, and possibly what wildflowers had been in the vicinity.

Excerpted from The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar. Copyright © 2025 by Louis Sachar. Excerpted by permission of Ace Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.