The Last Unicorn
Peter S. Beagle’s 1968 novel. A unicorn learns she may be the last of her kind and leaves her forest to find the others, falling in with an inept magician and a hard-worn woman, and reaching the castle of King Haggard and the Red Bull. It is funny and formally playful while staying genuinely sad about mortality, and it remains the book against which other unicorn stories are measured.
Recommended by 1 Person
Katherine Arden
It’s funny, unicorns are obviously very prominent creatures in the magical pantheon, but there aren’t a ton of books that feature them. There are children’s books, but fewer books for adults. Peter S Beagle is at the pinnacle, the classic of them all.
Interview · June 2026
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