"What's in the bottle? It looks empty to me.""There's nothing in the bottle...just air. It's the yogi's last breath."How many of these gurus have died just to have their closest disciples gather up everything they owned, their shoes, their bowl, their robes, their fancy cars, and then called them all holy? All religions do this or would if they could. Maybe it is like catching a baseball at the Super bowl and keeping it, or having Keith Urban's jacket, but at least these things are not considere...

This is one of those books that gives me intense wanderlust. Tahir Shah is either a man with an incredible knack for stumbling across the bizarre, a fabulous liar, or some combination of the two. His story is absolutely outlandish, and sometimes I wondered if he was playing tricks on me just as the Indian godmen he visits perform illusions for rapt audiences. Several of the events in the book are just too coincidental, too good to be true. But in the end, I don't even care—his performance was so...

Ah, a juicy combination of Indian travelogue, cultural commentary, coming-of-age memoir and chemical cookbook. If you need to know how to fake not having a pulse with a walnut in your armpit, this is the book for you.Interested in the relationship between spirituality, mysticism and stage magic?Want to taste and smell dawn in Calcutta?The writing is akin to Gerald Durrell's zoo collecting memoirs of the 1960s - a vast vocabulary at the service of precise detail and an enthralling true account of...

A Journey of observation. Whose journey though? The writer's the reader's the sorcerer's the apprentice's. What a book even the commas are interesting. A burn the midnight oil book. Things are not what they seem in this extraordinary narrative. It is an inveigling 'wunderbar' book.'Tahir Shah has a genius for surreal travelling..... I do most heartily recommend this book.' That is what Doris Lessing said. It is written on the dust cover of my 1998 hard cover edition. Quote from the book. 'Feroze...

I love books about India, books about travel and books about magic, so this was a real treat. An absolutely splendid adventure with plenty of humour mixed in.

This book is a must read: a highly entertaining journey that can't be put down. I read it in about three days, staying up late at night to finish a chapter and then continuing onto the next one. If I hadn't had work to do, I would have read it in one sitting. I don't know what the negative reviewers were expecting, but this book seems to have something for everyone: travel, humor, revelation of secrets of the trade. In a video on his YouTube channel, the author insists that the book is 100% true...

In his tenacious quest to become a master illusionist, Shah travels through India’s dark underbelly. Fantastically ingenious con men, skilled in misdirection and slight-of-hand, abound in India. Observing and reporting on India’s scam artists and “godmen” (frequently one and the same), Shah tells hilarious anecdotes, often at his own expense. The Tahir narrating Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a kind of Candide—naïve, exuberant, impervious to physical discomfort, boundlessly curious, obsessively carryi...

For a really great Review of this book go and read Jessaca's ! I am not going to try to compete with that. But I have a couple of points to add. First to just briefly summarize; This is a brilliant book in which Tahir Shah is taken on and trained by what must be one of India's greatest Illusionists and then travels from Calcutta to Bombay observing India's godmen and explaining how they use illusions and trickery, rather than anything mystical, to impress the crowds of their powers, to win follo...

If you ever plan to take a long trip through India, always go for a train provided you have the time, patience and fortitude for it. If you are an adventurous soul then always go for a non-AC sleeper option and it will be an incredibly rewarding experience in terms of the things you see and the people you meet. Of special interest to the traveler would be who come to sell their wares which range from ball pins to mobile batteries, the performers who sing and dance or perform magic tricks for a

I have read and have thoroughly enjoyed all of Shah's works. He comes from an elite British family of Afghan royalty. His parents wanted him to follow family tradition and pursue a noble profession. Instead Tahir opted for a free-spirited life of travel, anthropology and writing. His travel ideas are spontaneous andand the people that he meets along the way are serendipitous. In Sorcerer's Apprentice he travels throughout India in search of India's infamous illusionist. He writes about his magic...

I enjoyed this story of Tahir running around India learning about Magic. I think there may of been a little embellishment in his true story. I believe one should not let strict adherence to the facts get in the way of a good story!

A genial baron Von munchausen type with a taste for the bizarre should be fun but isn't.

In the Sorcerer's Apprentice, author Tahir Shah, performs a feat of prose magic. Ordered by the Illusionist to whom he has apprenticed himself to take a cross-county tour to 'observe,' Shah takes the reader with him on a lively and ribald trip through the uniquely Indian world of religious gurus, healers, the 'secret army' and hucksters of many varieties. One of things I enjoy about Shah is his willingness to expose himself as alternatively credulous and incredulous, trusting and mistrusting whi...

Exquisite TripAnother gem from Tahir Shah. I love the way the book is written . Highly enjoyable and evocative. To contemplate the intricacies of India in such detail and successfully meander the overwhelming chaos of the sub continent.

Always eager to read about the weird and exotic, this book met all the requirements.Traveling to India to learn the magician's arts, Shah becomes the student of the tyrannical but urbane and knowledgeable Hakim Feroze. After many weeks suffering through his training, Feroze ejects him into the vastness of India. Befriended by a young trickster, he experiences a country teeming with grifters and con men, traveling salesmen, roving holy men, buggy beds and bad food. (At one point, recovering from

Warning! This book is presented as a travel account, but it is mainly a work of fiction by an author who is deeply prejudiced against Hindus. It is materially impossible to get to know so many swindlers in so little time, and to gather so much information orally without knowing the local languages.The author very likely collected information from English-language newspapers he read during his stay and presented it as autobiographical, while choosing only the bits that would show Hindus in a bad

This book had a lot of promise...which it did not live up to.Author Tahir Shah goes on a quest to learn the "secrets of Illusion" from a master of illusion. He submits himself to all sorts of tasks that he should be learning from as assigned by the master.He eventually is assigned the task of traveling through out India to observe. Observe what? Along the way he picks up a side-kick who helps pave the way for him. Never mind the sidekick is a young thief and liar.After all his so-called adventur...

Picked up the day before getting on a plane to India. Reading it while riding the train between Delhi and Jodhpur and Jophpur to Jaipur - it may have colored my opinion of what I saw and what I read. Though the writing is at times a bit uneven, overall it is one man's very interesting story. Much of it is true, or all of it? It does not even matter. The cynicism does not take any of the mystery and magic away from the story or from India. It makes it all the more so. A great read.

What a Book!It is little wonder that this, the book which tells of Tahir Shah’s time in India, learning conjuring and illusion from Hakim Feroze – a callous, sadistic, obsessed magician with unnerving occult powers – is his most popular work of travel.Before initiating him into the secrets of Indian magic, Feroze instils in his apprentice the capacity to endure and insists he becomes a polymath. As if foreseeing the young man’s future life and work, he provides exactly the preparation needed. Th...

This is a great book. I can tell because the other reviews are either love it or hate it. I am the weird one in that I wasn't in love with the book of journeys to find out the culture of illusion in India, but it was interesting and I chuckled a couple of times. I like the way Tahir Shah writes in a somewhat humorous self-debasing sort of way. And I was intrigued to find out how the "Godmen" (isn't that an oxymoron?) were able to do their tricks. And, I was impressed with the way Tahir Shah desc...

Disappointing in many respects. Shah wrote this long before The Caliph's House. His writing skills improved enormously over the years, but as he traveled through India, desperate to become a skilled illusionist, I was amazed and then annoyed by his overwhelming naivete. Although his wide-eyed, oh gee--was still evident in Caliph's House, in that account at least he was not a danger to himself and others. One of the astonishing elements is how the plot of The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing (Ta...

1971 I traveled to India, Nepal and Afghanistan. The world was a safer place. Many of the homes I visited had pictures of JFK hanging on the walls and once people found out you were American there was smiles and welcoming all about. If only it was still so. I digress. I enjoy travel books and was hoping this one would semi satisfy my chronic wanderlust. It didn’t. I liked the parts of the story when the author described the people and places. Much less so the rest of the book. Let’s just say I w...

This was an interesting travel book, where the author travels around India looking for magicians and illusionists and other odd characters. It definitely made me realize how much can be accomplished by tricks and illusion-levitation, flowers bowing down, "hibernating", etc. I found the story of the konkalwallas (skeleton collectors) particularly interesting. I'm not a big fan of his humor, and the resolution of his apprenticeship is anticlimactic. But still, in all it was a short, fun read.

Amaizingly interesting, humorous and sad at the same time, astounding and shocking. Yes, this is India, and Tahir with ease let you smell it, taste it, feel it, you will worry for people there and admire them...

Fascinating travelogue of a man in India studying to become a great illusionist and searching out the strange and bizarre across the country. The beginning of this book is very strong, but as it goes on it seems to wander (as the author is wandering) and lose focus.

An otherwise fascinating travelogue made somewhat unbearable by the unbelievable sense of entitlement expressed by the author. Were this a work of fiction, the author's failings would make an interesting contrast, but here it just comes across as pig-headedly refusing to accept the gifts presented.

Not as Exciting as I HopedThe synopsis and a podcast with the author piqued my curiosity; however, the plot rambled and the story never really grabbed me.

The kind of racist stereotypes Tahir Shah deals in here belong in the nineteenth century!

This book is excellent. It is descriptive, exciting, incites wanderlust of the strongest and deepest kind, and is hilarious. Tahir has very dry, observant humor and I was laughing out loud throughout the book. It is such a wonderfully woven story and it seems too imaginative to be a memoir. The author is curiously distant from the book. He describes himself and his actions and reactions, but they are always muted and have little emotion behind them. It is a very curious way to write a memoir, wh...

A perfect travelogue while living in this period of enforced lockdown. It led my mind to wander into places I would otherwise not ventured into. This book instilled a natural sense of wanderlust. Tahir Shah journeys through India subcontinent to find the most absurds of 'miracles' (which are mostly nicely wrapped parlour tricks or/and the abuse of sophisticated chemistry applied in cunning ways). It was only after mid-way of the read that it dawned on me that this is a non-fiction book! In my de...