The Horse and His Boy: C.S. Lewis’s Desert Escape to Narnia
One night, in a small stable in Calormen, a boy called Shasta lies awake after learning that the fisherman he lives with plans to sell him as a slave. Then the horse beside him begins to talk. The Horse and His Boy, first published in 1954, is the Narnia book set almost entirely outside Narnia, and one of the most exciting of the seven.
Author: C.S. Lewis (1898–1963)
Title: The Horse and His Boy (1954)
Format: English paperback (HarperCollins Children’s Books), illustrated by Pauline Baynes
Scope: Book 3 of The Chronicles of Narnia in the modern reading order
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0006716784 (ASIN 0006716784)
Two Runaways and Two Talking Horses
Bree is a talking horse from Narnia, and together he and Shasta decide to head north. On the way they meet Aravis, a Tarkheena fleeing an arranged marriage to a powerful Calormene lord, and her own talking mare, Hwin.
Their journey takes them through Tashbaan, the capital of Calormen. There Shasta is mistaken for Corin, prince of Archenland, and thanks to the mix-up he learns how to cross the desert. Aravis, meanwhile, discovers that the Tisroc’s son, Prince Rabadash, plans to start a war to seize Anvard and take Narnia. Shasta and Aravis set off on a long, hard journey to try to stop it.
Fantasy Full of Surprises
The Horse and His Boy is a fantasy book full of surprises and action that grabs the reader from the first moment. It works perfectly well on its own, and it adds depth to the world of the other Narnia books by showing the lands to the south.
Aravis, Bree and Hwin
Shasta does not travel alone for long. The talking horse Bree, a proud Narnian war-horse stolen as a foal, is joined by Hwin, a gentle mare, and her rider Aravis, a Calormene noblewoman running away from an arranged marriage to an old and powerful lord. Aravis is one of Lewis’s most vivid heroines: brave, sharp-tongued and at first rather snobbish, and her slow friendship with the humble Shasta is one of the book’s pleasures. Bree’s vanity, and the way it is humbled, is another.
A Story Set in the Golden Age
Unlike the other Chronicles, this book takes place entirely within Narnia’s world while the Pevensie children are grown-up kings and queens, during the reign described at the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Susan, Edmund and Lucy appear as adults, and the plot turns on a threat to Narnia and to its small neighbour Archenland from the Calormene prince Rabadash. Shasta’s true identity, when it is revealed, ties the whole journey together.
Reading It Today
It was the fifth Narnia book Lewis wrote but is placed third in the modern reading order. Some modern readers find its portrayal of the Calormenes, a southern desert empire, uncomfortable, and that is worth discussing with young readers. As an adventure it is one of the most self-contained of the series, and it works well even for readers who have not read the others. Pauline Baynes’s original illustrations, included in this edition, remain part of its charm.
Aslan’s Role
Aslan appears in unexpected forms throughout the journey, and in one of the best scenes explains to Shasta that he was there all along. Each character, Lewis suggests, is told only their own story, never anyone else’s.
Why Read It Now
Numbered third in the modern order of the seven Chronicles, the book is often overlooked in favour of the Pevensie adventures. It shouldn’t be: it has a chase, a desert crossing, a war to prevent and one of Lewis’s best pairs of friends, in horse and boy alike.
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