Iris Murdoch
Author
Language
English
Description
On the eve of their wedding, Edward Lannion and Marian Berran are led away onto dark and strange paths, while their friends and lovers are forced to make new and surprising choices. Watching over all of them is Jackson, a mysterious and charismatic manservant who, in guiding all the young lovers into the light, has to make his own agonizing decisions.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A family struggles for redemption after a funeral brings dark secrets to the surface in this novel from the Booker Prize–winning author of The Sea, The Sea.
For the first time in years, Edmund Narraway has returned to his childhood home—for the funeral of his mother. The visit rekindles feelings of affection and nostalgia—but also triggers a resurgence of the tensions that caused him to leave in the...
For the first time in years, Edmund Narraway has returned to his childhood home—for the funeral of his mother. The visit rekindles feelings of affection and nostalgia—but also triggers a resurgence of the tensions that caused him to leave in the...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Edward Baltram is overwhelmed with guilt. His nasty little prank has gone horribly wrong: He has fed his closest friend a sandwich laced with a hallucinogenic drug and the young man has fallen out of a window to his death. Edward searches for redemption through a reunion with his famous father, the reclusive painter Jesse Baltram. Funny and compelling, The Good Apprentice is at once a supremely sophisticated entertainment and an inquiry...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
An Anglican priest loses his faith and sends his family and parish spinning into chaos. Father Carel Fisher's London rectory - like his faith - is a shell. The rectory remains hollowed and broken from bombs dropped in the Second World War, while his religious passion abandoned him long ago. As Carel becomes a shut-in, his brother Marcus sets out to save him before it's too late. Rich and complex, The Time of the Angels is a powerful story of a man's...
Author
Publisher
Penguin Publishing Group
Pub. Date
1978
Language
English
Formats
Description
A sparklingly profound novel about the conflict between love and loyalty
The quiet life of schoolmaster Bill Mor and his wife Nan is disturbed when a young woman, Rain Carter, arrives at the school to paint the portrait of the headmaster. Mor, hoping to enter politics, becomes aware of new desires. A complex battle develops, involving love, guilt, magic, art, and political ambition. Mor’s teenage children and their mother fight discreetly...
The quiet life of schoolmaster Bill Mor and his wife Nan is disturbed when a young woman, Rain Carter, arrives at the school to paint the portrait of the headmaster. Mor, hoping to enter politics, becomes aware of new desires. A complex battle develops, involving love, guilt, magic, art, and political ambition. Mor’s teenage children and their mother fight discreetly...
Author
Publisher
Penguin Publishing Group
Pub. Date
1988
Language
English
Formats
Description
A scintillating novel of fate, accidents, and moral dilemmas
Set in the time of the Vietnam War, this story concerns the plight of a young American, happily installed in a perfect job in England, engaged to a wonderful girl, who is suddenly drafted to a war he disapproves of.
What is duty here, what is self-interest, what is cowardice? Austin Gibson Grey, the accidental man of the title, is accident-prone, also prone to bring disaster...
Set in the time of the Vietnam War, this story concerns the plight of a young American, happily installed in a perfect job in England, engaged to a wonderful girl, who is suddenly drafted to a war he disapproves of.
What is duty here, what is self-interest, what is cowardice? Austin Gibson Grey, the accidental man of the title, is accident-prone, also prone to bring disaster...
Author
Publisher
Penguin Publishing Group
Pub. Date
1977
Language
English
Formats
Description
Iris Murdoch's debut—a comic novel about work and love, wealth and fame
Jake Donaghue, garrulous artist, meets Hugo Bellfounder, silent philosopher.
Jake, hack writer and sponger, now penniless flat-hunter, seeks out an old girlfriend, Anna Quentin, and her glamorous actress sister, Sadie. He resumes acquaintance with the formidable Hugo, whose ‘philosophy’ he once presumptuously dared to interpret. These meetings involve...
Jake Donaghue, garrulous artist, meets Hugo Bellfounder, silent philosopher.
Jake, hack writer and sponger, now penniless flat-hunter, seeks out an old girlfriend, Anna Quentin, and her glamorous actress sister, Sadie. He resumes acquaintance with the formidable Hugo, whose ‘philosophy’ he once presumptuously dared to interpret. These meetings involve...
Author
Publisher
Penguin Publishing Group
Pub. Date
1978
Language
English
Formats
Description
John Ducane, a respected Whitehall civil servant, is asked to investigate the suicide of a colleague. As he pursues his inquiry he uncovers a shabby, evil world of murder, blackmail, and black magic.
In contrast to stagnant summer London, Octavian and Kate Gray’s adoring community on the Dorset coast seems to offer Ducane refuge, but even here the aftereffects of violence poison an atmosphere already electric with adolescent quarrels and...
In contrast to stagnant summer London, Octavian and Kate Gray’s adoring community on the Dorset coast seems to offer Ducane refuge, but even here the aftereffects of violence poison an atmosphere already electric with adolescent quarrels and...
9) The Unicorn
Author
Publisher
Penguin Publishing Group
Pub. Date
1987
Language
English
Formats
Description
A brilliant mythical drama about well-meaning people trapped in a war of spiritual forces
Marian Taylor, who has come as a “companion” to a lovely woman in a remote castle, becomes aware that her employer is a prisoner, not only of her obsessions, but of an unforgiving husband.
Hannah, the Unicorn, seemingly an image of persecuted virtue, fascinates those who surround her, some of whom plan to rescue her from her dream of...
Marian Taylor, who has come as a “companion” to a lovely woman in a remote castle, becomes aware that her employer is a prisoner, not only of her obsessions, but of an unforgiving husband.
Hannah, the Unicorn, seemingly an image of persecuted virtue, fascinates those who surround her, some of whom plan to rescue her from her dream of...
10) A Severed Head
Author
Publisher
Penguin Publishing Group
Pub. Date
1976
Language
English
Formats
Description
A novel about the frightfulness and ruthlessness of being in love, from the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea, The Sea
Martin Lynch-Gibson believes he can possess both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover. But when his wife, Antonia, suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional reeducation. He attempts to behave beautifully and sensibly. Then he meets a woman whose demonic...
Martin Lynch-Gibson believes he can possess both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover. But when his wife, Antonia, suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional reeducation. He attempts to behave beautifully and sensibly. Then he meets a woman whose demonic...
11) The Green Knight
Author
Publisher
Penguin Publishing Group
Pub. Date
1995
Language
English
Formats
Description
Full of suspense, humor, and symbolism, this magnificently crafted and magical novel replays biblical and medieval themes in contemporary London. An attempt by the sharp, feral, and uncommonly intelligent Lucas Graffe to murder his sensual and charismatic half-brother Clement is interrupted by a stranger—whom Lucas strikes and leaves for dead. When the stranger mysteriously reappears, with specific demands for reparation, the Graffes’...
12) The sea, the sea
Author
Publisher
Folio Society
Pub. Date
2009
Language
English
Description
Charles Arrowby's peaceful retirement in his isolated home by the sea is suddenly violently disturbed by a succession of strange events and visits from people from his past.
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
The Flight from the Enchanter: In 1950s London, when the enigmatic and charismatic businessman Mischa Fox turns his entrepreneurial gaze on a small feminist magazine. His intoxicating influence begins to affect the lives of those involved: the fragile editor, Hunter; his sister, Rosa, who splits her time and affections between her brother and two other men; innocent Annette, whose journey from school to the real world ends up being more fraught than...
Author
Language
English
Description
An enigmatic publisher's sway on a circle of friends drives each to confront their most dangerous obsessions Businessman Mischa Fox has wealth, charisma, and an uncanny ability to influence those around him. When he moves to buy a small feminist magazine in London called the Artemis, Mischa becomes entangled in the lives of the Artemis's editor, Hunter, his sister, Rosa, and her boarder, Annette, as well as their circle of friends. As Mischa...
15) A Word Child
Author
Language
English
Description
A brilliant but deeply flawed man struggles to earn absolution. Hilary Burde was a rising star in academia until a tragic accident plunged him and his mentor and rival, Gunnar Jopling, into two decades of depression and guilt. Hilary, unable to overcome his pain, abandoned his promising career for an unfulfilling job as a civil servant. But at age forty-one, Hilary crosses paths again with Gunnar - initiating a series of events that will change their...
Author
Language
English
Description
On the eve of the Easter Rising, a divided Irish family is pushed to the brink of destruction. In the dark days of the First World War, tensions between Catholic Pat Dumay and his Protestant cousin Andrew Chase-White threaten to tear their family apart along political and religious lines. As Ireland moves ever closer to the deadly Easter rebellion, the family is engulfed in an epic drama of love, loyalty, and loss that will change their lives forever....
Author
Language
English
Description
A mysterious accident drives the inhabitants of a quiet town to face their darkest obsessions When George McCaffrey's car plunges into a canal with his wife still inside, nobody knows whether George is to blame. Nobody, that is, except an Anglican priest who happened to witness the whole thing. And when George's former teacher, the charismatic philosopher Rozanov, returns to town, George's life begins to spin wildly out of control. Set in the English...
Author
Language
English
Description
Iris Murdoch (1919–99) was a British writer and philosopher. Her twenty-six novels include the Booker Prize–winning The Sea, the Sea. Avril Horner and Anne Rowe are the coeditors of Iris Murdoch: Texts and Contexts and Iris Murdoch and Morality.
For the first time, novelist Iris Murdoch's life in her own words, from girlhood to her last years
Iris Murdoch was an acclaimed novelist and groundbreaking philosopher whose life reflected her unconventional...
19) The Novels of Iris Murdoch Volume One: Henry and Cato, The Italian Girl, and The Philosopher's Pupil
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Henry and Cato: Henry Marshalson and Cato Forbes were inseparable childhood friends. But their lives took different paths. Henry went to the United States to teach art history. Cato became a priest. When Henry's brother dies, leaving him sole heir to his family's vast estate, he returns to England, and the two friends reconnect. As Henry struggles to come to terms with his personal passions and family obligations, Cato fights against his religious...
Author
Language
English
Description
A powerful novel of a family's search for love amid the wreckage of failed relationships An Unofficial Rose is a story of a father and son, both dissatisfied with their lives, and both in love with someone other than their wives. While the father, a widower, regrets never leaving his wife for his mistress, the son seeks any opportunity to escape his dull marriage. Written with Murdoch's masterful blend of comedy and tragedy, An Unofficial Rose...