The Horse and His Boy
core novel 1954 The Chronicles of Narnia
Record
| First published | 1954 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.91 (405,323 ratings, collected 2026-09-13) |
| Page count | 224 |
| First-edition ISBN | 006440501X |
| First-edition publisher | Geoffrey Bles |
| First-edition country | UK |
| Internal chronology | 3 |
Synopsis
Set generations earlier than most of the Narnia books, the story opens in the southern land of Calormen, where a boy named Shasta lives with a fisherman, Arsheesh, whom he has always believed to be his father. When a visiting nobleman offers to buy him as a slave, Shasta overhears that he was actually found as an infant, washed ashore in a boat, and resolves to flee north toward the free lands he has heard of. His escape becomes possible when the nobleman's horse, Bree, reveals himself to be a talking Narnian stallion who was captured as a foal and longs to return home. On their journey the pair meet Aravis, a young Calormene noblewoman escaping an arranged marriage, and her talking mare Hwin.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Chronicles of Narnia
- Series: The Chronicles of Narnia core; position 5 of 7 in the series' recorded order
- Author: C.S. Lewis
Notes
- From the series record (The Chronicles of Narnia): Dual ordering: publication (1950-56) vs internal chronology (HarperCollins renumbering, 1994); scholars generally prefer publication order.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series The Chronicles of Narnia: position 5 of 7: previous The Silver Chair (1953) · next The Magician's Nephew (1955)
- Internal chronology, within The Chronicles of Narnia: position 3 of 7: previous The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) · next Prince Caspian (1951)
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Narnia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horse_and_His_Boy
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