Book description
In this 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.
Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919 of Anglo-Irish parents. She
went to Badminton School, Bristol, and read classics at Somerville
College, Oxford. During the war she was an Assistant Principal at the
Treasury, and then worked with UNRRA in London, Belgium and Austria.
She held a studentship in philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge,
and then in 1948 she returned to Oxford, where she became a Fellow of
St Anne's College. Until her death in February 1999, she lived with
her husband, the teacher and critic John Bayley, in Oxford. Awarded
the CBE in 1976, Iris Murdoch was made a DBE in the 1987 New Year's
Honours List. In the 1997 PEN Awards she received the Gold Pen for
Distinguished Service to Literature.
Iris Murdoch made her writing debut in 1954 with Under the
Net, and went on to write twenty-six novels, including the Booker
prize-winning The Sea, The Sea (1978). Other literary awards
include the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Black
Prince (1973) and the Whitbread Prize (now the Costa Book Award)
for The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974). Her works of
philosophy include Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, Metaphysics
as a Guide to Morals (1992) and Existentialists and
Mystics (1997) She wrote several plays including The Italian
Girl (with James Saunders) and The Black Prince, adapted
from her novels of the same name.
