Plot
In 1960, 10-year-old Arthur is living with his grandmother in a quiet farm house. His grandfather has recently gone missing and he sees little of his parents. His grandmother entertains him by reading stories of his grandfather's adventures in Africa. One of these stories is about the friendship between the tall Bogo Matassalai and the tooth-sized, elfin Minimoys. After grandfather had helped the Bogo Matassalai, they and the Minimoys gave him a number of rubies as thanks. Grandfather brought the Minimoys home with him, where they now live in his garden and protect his rubies. Arthur becomes enamoured with a picture of Selenia, the princess of the Minimoys.
Arthur's grandmother has been given a two-day deadline to pay a large sum of money to a building developer named Davido, who has bought her mortgage from the bank and plans to evict the two. Arthur looks for the rubies in order to pay off the debt, stumbling across various clues left by his missing grandfather. He is met in the garden by the Bogo Matassala, who show Arthur how to get into the Minimoys' underground world by becoming a Minimoy himself.
Under the garden with the Minimoys, Arthur learns that they are in danger from Maltazard, a Minimoy war hero who now leads the nearby underground community of Necropolis, who plans to conquer the Minimoys by flooding their city. Maltazard was corrupted by a seductive weevil, with whom he has a son named Darkos.
Arthur, reflecting his legendary British namesake, draws a sacred sword from its recess and uses it to protect the Minimoys from Maltazard's soldiers. The Minimoy king sends Arthur to Necropolis, along with the princess Selenia and her younger brother Betameche. The trio are put in danger by Maltazard's soldiers numerous times, and discover that the irrigation system of drinking straws Arthur had made to water radishes for his grandmother is being cut apart by the soldiers, who are making plans to use them as water pipes to flood the Minimoys Over the course of the journey, Arthur comes to fall in love with Selenia.
When the trio arrive in Necropolis, Selenia kisses Arthur, marking him as her husband and the future king. Selenia then takes the sword and confronts Maltazard. When Maltazard learns that she has already kissed Arthur and thus can no longer give him her powers, he throws them all in a cell. They find Arthur's grandfather in the cell, also in Minimoy form, where Maltazard has been forcing him to reveal his knowledge.
Arthur and his grandfather return to human form, with little time to spare before the flood will reach the Minimoys. With the help of Milo, a royal advisor's long-lost son living in Necropolis, Arthur is able to find the pipe on the surface that goes straight down into Necropolis. Arthur redirects the flood to Necropolis, saving the Minimoys and destroying Necropolis. Maltazard abandons Necropolis, leaving behind his son, Darkos. The force of the water ejects the rubies above ground.
Grandfather pays Davido with one ruby; he tries to take all, but the Bogo Matassalai capture him and give him to the authorities (scene deleted in the U.S. edition).
The story closes with Arthur asking Selenia to wait patiently until the time is right for them to be together.
Read more about this topic: Arthur And The Invisibles
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“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)