A Fairly Honourable Defeat

A Fairly Honourable Defeat
Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2001-03-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780141186177

An exploration of love and its excesses, missteps, and modest triumphs, from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, The Sea In a dark comedy of errors, Iris Murdoch portrays the mischief wrought by Julius, a cynical intellectual who decides to demonstrate through a Machiavellian experiment how easily loving couples, caring friends, and devoted siblings can betray their loyalties. As puppet master, Julius artfully plays on the human tendency to embrace drama and intrigue and to prefer the distraction of confrontations to the difficult effort of communicating openly and honestly. 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 Black Prince

The Black Prince
Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2003-03-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101495685

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 Sandcastle

The Sandcastle
Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 277
Release: 1978-03-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101495812

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 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?

The Good Apprentice

The Good Apprentice
Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2001-12-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780141186689

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.

Writing Book Reviews

Writing Book Reviews
Author: John Eldridge Drewry
Publisher:
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1966
Genre: Book reviewing
ISBN:

Complete revision of the author's "Book reviewing", originally published in 1945.

Nuns and Soldiers

Nuns and Soldiers
Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2002-07-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780142180099

A dazzling meditation on love and honor, greed and generosity, passion and death, from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, The Sea Set in London and in the South of France, this brilliantly structured novel centers on two women: Gertrude Openshaw, bereft from the recent death of her husband, yet awakening to passion; and Anne Cavidge, who has returned in doubt from many years in a nunnery, only to encounter her personal Christ. A fascinating array of men and women hover in urgent orbit around them: the "Count," a lonely Pole obsessively reliving his émigré father's patriotic anguish; Tim Reede, a seedy yet appealing artist, and Daisy, his mistress; the manipulative Mrs. Mount; and many other magically drawn characters moving between desire and obligation, guilt and joy. This edition of Nuns and Soldiers includes a new introduction by renowned religious historian Karen Armstrong.

From a Tiny Corner in the House of Fiction

From a Tiny Corner in the House of Fiction
Author: Gillian Dooley
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781570034992

Dooley provides background information for each of the interviews, along with a thorough index.

The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

The Sacred and Profane Love Machine
Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 339
Release: 1984-03-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101494255

Swinging between his wife and his mistress in the sacred and profane love machine and between the charms of morality and the excitements of sin, the psychotherapist, Blaise Gavender, sometimes wishes he could divide himself in two. Instead, he lets loose misery and confusion and—for the spectators at any rate—a morality play, rich in reflections upon the paradoxes of human life and the nature of the battle between sacred and profane love.

The Sea, the Sea

The Sea, the Sea
Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2001-03-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101495650

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.