The Magician's Nephew (BBC Radio Collection: Chronicles of Narnia) [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

The BBC 4 radio did a pretty good job with these Chronicles of Narnia. They are stories that have to be told in words and music, in pure sound effects and dialogues. The magic of these books is in the imagination of the listeners that have to accept to believe what they are told and to fill in the images they are not given with their own images, if they can.

And that goal these radio dramatizations perform perfectly.

You have to take the seven books in Narnian not in publishing chronological order. That's the only way to make sense. The general meaning then comes up and after fifteen hours of listening you see the whole project C.S. Lewis had in mind. Narnia is only the key to his real tale not the real tale itself. It is only the cover and title page of the real tale.

The real tale is that life always has a beginning and an end and that during this life you start young and end old, you start nimble and end stiff, you start a believer and too often end an unbeliever, and if you learn how to believe again at the end it is only out of fear and not out of belief, faith. One has to believe life is only one transient phase of our existence and that we live a long time before and a long time after our birth and death.

But this is not any Christian easy fable. We live before our birth because we are born what other people, our parents and many other people of their time, have imagined we will be and they provide us with a tremendous inheritance. It is the wardrobe of the beginning, that door to our future. At the same time we live a long time after our death because first we will remember forever what our life was and we will give the next generations all we have done and achieved.

And that's the next lesson. What we will give the next generations is not what we were but what we did. Too many people just live their life as if it were some chore, some unbearable load without seeing that the harder their life is, the more adventurous it is too and the more creative it is. The lesson is always further up and further in and life is like an onion the deeper you get the wider each circle becomes. You may peal as many skins as you want from the onion each peal will reveal a wider world than the peal that has just fallen.

So life is not to serve a god, or a demon. It is to serve others, to do good to others and for others, and that is always an exacting and exhausting task and mission we are given not by some extraterrestrial god or demon but by our absolutely deepest and most spiritual mind and benevolence. Those who want to get everything are wrong. The best reward people can get in this world is to give others a chance to be better, to improve, to give even more than we can give.

That's probably the ethical and moral message of this visionary author. We are in what we give to the younger generation and not to our bank accounts. And this Narnia fable can find an end and be rejuvenated only in death, in our death that gives way to younger people who will go farther, further in and further up, always deeper and wider. The real problem for us, who are bound to die and who will our heritage to the next generation, is that we might not be understood, at first at least, by this next generation. That's what Narnia is all about. If we really have something to will to the world we will probably not be understood long before or after our passing away.

That is probably what fascinated C.S. Lewis in Jesus. He was only understood after, long after his death, and that is true of all visionary people in the world. They are not prophets but they are achievers. Unluckily their achievements will only become visible after their going on to another world. C.S. Lewis was known in his time for his ethical and literary books, and now he is mostly known for his children's tales. His lasting fame is Narnia and not his medieval and philosophical writings. No one can say ahead of time what will survive them and be their eternal fame. And if anyone tries to do that, he will turn up a pretty criminal mind because he will try to force history instead of enhancing it.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

A must for C.S.Lewis fans-a wonderful interpretation.
I think in many ways I enjoy the audio CD more than the TV series as you can use your imagination and see all the characters, when driving the car for example.

Already I read all the other Chronicles as a child, think I missed this one.

Really enjoyed. Excellent quality.