The Prestige was based on a novel by which author?

The Prestige was based on a novel by Christopher Priest. Priest’s 1995 novel also bears the title The Prestige and follows rival Victorian-era stage magicians whose professional competition becomes increasingly destructive. Christopher and Jonathan Nolan adapted its central ideas into the 2006 film, preserving themes of sacrifice, deception, obsession, and rivalry while substantially reshaping the story.

The film’s screenplay was written by the Nolan brothers. Christopher Nolan encountered Priest’s book while in London promoting Memento and later shared it with Jonathan. Their adaptation took several years to develop, partly because the novel’s nested journals, shifting viewpoints, and stories-within-stories structure had to be translated into cinematic form.

The movie is not a scene-for-scene reproduction of the book. The adaptation removes the novel’s modern framing story and its spiritualism subplot, while changing the circumstances surrounding the magicians’ rivalry and the ending. Priest approved of the result, describing it as an extraordinary adaptation. The film retains the novel’s title and its three-part conception of a magic trick: the pledge, the turn, and the prestige. This is why Christopher Priest—not one of the film’s actors, inventors, or screenwriters—is the canonical answer.