The Black Prince

Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 178487518X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.' 'A source of wonders and delight' Spectator Ex-tax collector and author of two unpopular novels, Bradley Pearson wishes to devote his retirement to writing a masterpiece. But the doorbell and the phone keep ringing, and every ring brings with it an ex-wife, a friend in need, a sister in trouble or a young woman seeking a teacher, and so dusty, selfish Bradley is plunged into the muddles and mysteries which will end in his doom. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1973. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE HANNAH VINTAGE CLASSICS MURDOCH: Funny, subversive, fearless and fiercely intelligent, Iris Murdoch was one of the great writers of the twentieth century. To celebrate her centenary Vintage Classics presents special editions of her greatest and most timeless novels.

The Black Prince

Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Vintage Classic
ISBN: 9780099589259
Category : Authors
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
In this riveting tale of love and intellectual intrigue, Murdoch gives readers a seductive story with ever-mounting action, including suicide, abduction, romantic idylls, murder, and due process of law.

The Black Prince (Vintage Classics Murdoch Series)

Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 140902296X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 477

The Black Prince

Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101495685
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 391

Book Description
Bradley Pearson, an unsuccessful novelist in his late fifties, has finally left his dull office job as an Inspector of Taxes. Bradley hopes to retire to the country, but predatory friends and relations dash his hopes of a peaceful retirement. He is tormented by his melancholic sister, who has decided to come live with him; his ex-wife, who has infuriating hopes of redeeming the past; her delinquent brother, who wants money and emotional confrontations; and Bradley's friend and rival, Arnold Baffin, a younger, deplorably more successful author of commercial fiction. The ever-mounting action includes marital cross-purposes, seduction, suicide, abduction, romantic idylls, murder, and due process of law. Bradley tries to escape from it all but fails, leading to a violent climax and a coda that casts shifting perspectives on all that has preceded.

The Bell

Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101495669
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Book Description
A motley assortment of characters seek peace and salvation in this early masterpiece by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, The Sea A lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home of an order of sequestered nuns. A new bell is being installed when suddenly the old bell, a legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered. And then things begin to change. Meanwhile the wise old Abbess watches and prays and exercises discreet authority. And everyone, or almost everyone, hopes to be saved, whatever that may mean. Originally published in 1958, this funny, sad, and moving novel is about religion, sex, and the fight between good and evil. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Good Apprentice

Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780141186689
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Book 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 into the spiritual crises that afflict the modern world. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Italian Girl

Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 145320072X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 133

Book 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 first place. As Edmund once again becomes entangled in his family’s web of corrosive secrets, his homecoming tips a precariously balanced dynamic into sudden chaos, in this compelling story of reunion and coming apart from Iris Murdoch, “one of the most significant novelists of her generation” (The Guardian).

The Unicorn

Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101494247
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book 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 redemptive suffering. But is she an innocent victim, a guilty woman, a mad woman, or a witch? Is her spiritual life really some evil enchantment? If she is forcibly liberated will she die? The ordinary, sensible people survive, and are never sure whether they have understood.

Henry And Cato

Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1407019937
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 421

Book Description
Henry and Cato is the story of two prodigal sons. Henry returns from a self-imposed exile in America to an unforeseen inheritance of wealth and land in England. He is also returning to his mother. His friend Cato is struggling with two ambiguous intermingled passions, one for a God who may or may not exist, the other for a petty criminal who may or may not be capable of salvation. Cato's father and his sister Colette wait anxiously to welcome Cato back to sanity after his dubious escapades. Henry meanwhile confronts his mother, the unappeased furies of childish resentment, and various possibilities of revenge. Henry's cool mother watches, Cato's impetuous sister intervenes. Can love here become a saving force, or is it condemned to be possessive and demonic? Blackmail and violence take a hand, and both Henry and Cato return home at last.

A Severed Head

Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101495839
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 199

Book 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 splendor at first repels him and later arouses a consuming and monstrous passion. As his Medusa informs him, “this is nothing to do with happiness.” A Severed Head was adapted for a successful stage production in 1963 and was later made into a film starring Claire Bloom, Lee Remick, Richard Attenborough, and Ian Holm.