He's an English writer who's been active since the late 1960s, I believe. His works straddle the imaginary line between fantasy and realist fiction and his prose is considered to be very good, often with comparable storylines. Characterizations vary by story, but generally I liked them quite a bit. He's "literary," but not in the sense of the clichéd pejoratives about the horny mid-life crisis professor. Besides The Prestige, there's also Inverted World, The Islanders, and several others I myself haven't yet read.

Help you any?