Iris Murdoch

Winner of the Booker Prize--a tale of the strange obsessions that haunt a playwright as he composes his memoirs Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor, both professionally and personally, and amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors-some real, some spectral-that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core. 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.

After his wife's death, Hugh contemplates returning to his former mistress. Randall's young daughter, Miranda, is adored by her Australian cousin Penn, but has attachments elsewhere. Impelled by affection, lust and illusion, these characters search for love within a tightly woven web.

Bruno, dying, obsessed with spiders and preoccupied with death and reconciliation, lies at the center of an intricate spider's web of relationships and passions: Bruno's estranged and grieving son Miles; Danby, Bruno's widowed son-in-law, consoling himself with the Adelaide the maid, one of Murdoch's finest comic creations;

Stuart's step-brother Edward Baltram is tormented by guilt because he has, he believes, killed his best friend. Funny, compelling and extremely moving, THE GOOD APPRENTICE is about guilt ridden despair, and the difficult problem of how to try to be good - and the various magical devices which console those who are sensible enough not to try.

A work of coruscating moral brilliance, The Nice and the Good revolves around a happily married couple, Kate and Octavian, and the friends of all ages attached to their house in Dorset. The resonant sub plot involves murder and black magic in Whitehall, as the novel leads us through stress and terror to a profoundly joyous conclusion.

An unforgettable tale of love and repression, appearing in book form for the first time. Beautifully produced and hauntingly illustrated, this unknown work by Iris Murdoch (1918-1999) is something very special indeed. Previously unpublished but for an excerpt in a 1950s anthology, this is a bittersweet, haunting story. Yvonne, an ordinary, bold young Irish woman, believes that there's more to life than marriage to Sam, the dutiful Jewish lad who is courting her. Set in Dublin, against the vividly recognizable backdrop of the author's native city in the 1950s, Something Special is written with a wry humor and penetrating insight that evokes the psychological tension of James Joyce's The Dead. Gorgeously illustrated with line drawings by the renowned American artist Michael McCurdy, Something Special is a perfect gift for all occasions, but especially for anyone in love.

Annette runs away from her finishing school but learns more than she bargained for in the real world beyond; the fierce and melacholy Rosa is torn between two Polish brothers; This is a story of a group of people under a spell, and the centre of it all is the mysterious Mischa Fox, the enchanter.

In the English town of Ennistone, hot springs bubble up from deep beneath the earth. He exerts an almost magical influence over a host of Ennistonians, and especially over George McCaffrey, the Philosopher's old pupil, a demonic man desperate for redemption.

Best known as the author of 26 novels, Iris Murdoch was also an accomplished essayist and critic who taught philosophy for many years at Oxford University. This work gathers for the first time in one volume her most influential essays and shorter pieces. Included are her major critiques of existentialism written in the 1950s, her two Platonic dialogues on art and religion, incisive evaluations of the writings of T.S. Eliot, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Bauvoir, and Elias Canetti, as well as key texts on the continuing importance of the sublime, on the concept of love, and of the role great literature can play in curing the ills of philosophy. This volume confirms Iris Murdoch's major contributions to the literature and thought of the 20th century.

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' circle of idiosyncratic family and friends is disrupted--for the demands are bizarre, intrusive, and ultimately fatal.

This guide to morals is the culmination of the author's lifetime of work in philosophy. The author is concerned with the humanistic part of the history of philosophy, Plato to structuralism, and how it bears on our thoughts and feelings about our lives, our moral lives. She shows how our conception of morality is bound up with and in our worlds, not separate from them, not values separated from facts. More particularly, the subject in its first part includes consciousness, the nature of reality, the self-freedom. In its second part the subject is a conception of morality as somehow bound up with and in our worlds, not separate from them, not values separated from facts. This enterprise of the book, and its title, recall Kant's great groundwork of metaphysic morals. It is not philosophy of any of the dominant kinds in the English language its subject-matter is grander and more elusive, and it is much more literary, allusive, historical and spiritual. There are also extended commentaries on particular philosophers, including Schopenhauer, as well as a section on art, and some reflections on the novel, none of them personal or about the author's novels.

A group of liberal-minded intellectuals got together in their youth to subsidise their friend, David Crimond to write the definitive book about their political beliefs. Now years later, there is no sign of the book, but Crimond is about to erupt into their lives again. Iris Murdoch has written twenty-three novels to date - all of which are published in Penguin. "The Book and the Brotherhood" was shortlisted for the 1987 Booker Prize.

A scintillating novel of fate, accidents, and moral dilemmasSet 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 to his friend sand relations. He blames fate. But are we not all accidental, one of his victims asks. Fate and accidents make deep moral dilemmas for the characters in the long and complex tale.

A writer of detective fiction who has not recovered from the loss of his wife becomes involved in the life of a neighbor's family

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, The Sea comes a story about revenge and reconciliation, and the difference between being nice and being good. 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. He begins to feel more trapped than trapping. In contrast to a stagnant summer in London, Octavian and Kate Gray’s adoring community on the Dorset coast seems to offer Ducane refuge, but even here the after-effects of violence poison an atmosphere already electric with adolescent quarrels and intrigue. After a swim into the underworld, Ducane begins to realize that niceness is not enough. "A feast."--The Guardian

A sparklingly profound novel about the conflict between love and loyaltyThe 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 and ruthlessly against the invader. The Head, himself disenchanted, advises Mor to seize the girl and run. The final decision rests with Rain. Can a “great love” be purchased at too high a price?

A novel about the frightfulness and ruthlessness of being in love, from the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea, The SeaMartin 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.