Bøker av Iris Murdoch

Throughout her distinguished and prolific writing career, she explored questions of good and bad, myth and morality. The framework for Murdoch's questions - and her own conclusions - can be found in the Sovereignty of Good.

Gathered together in this volume are some of Iris Murdoch's most influential writings. They include major critiques of existentialism, essays such as "The Sublime and the Good", Platonic dialogues, and analyses of key literary and philosophical figures such as T.S.Eliot and Sartre.

When Charles Arrowby retires from his glittering career in the London theatre, he buys a remote house on the rocks by the sea. He hopes to escape from his tumultuous love affairs but unexpectedly bumps into his childhood sweetheart and sets his heart on destroying her marriage.

Here, drawing on a novelists insight into art, literature and psychology, Iris Murdoch conducts an ongoing debate with major writers, thinkers and theologians - from Augustine to Wittgenstein, Shakespeare to Sartre, Plato to Derrida - to provide fresh and compelling answers to these crucial questions.

Edmund has escaped from his family into a lonely life. One by one his relatives reveal their secrets to a reluctant Edmund: illicit affairs, hidden passions, shameful scandals. And the heart of all, there is, as always, the family's loyal servant, the Italian girl.

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 Previously unpublished but for an excerpt in a 1950s anthology, this is a bittersweet, haunting story.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.

Former tax inspector Bradley Pearson is a writer who has published nothing - his precept is perfect; his maxim is to wait - unlike his best friend Arnold Baffin who is a prolific, highly-successful writer of second-rate novels. Now Bradley is to retire to his seaside cottage to write his masterpiece. In a series of smartly comic scenes, his departure is thwarted by a succesision of unwelcome visitors and crises: a wheedling ex-brother-in-law, a detested ex-wife, a suicidal sister, a distraught phone call from Arthur who has battered his wife Rachel. But when the Baffin's teenage daughter Julia asks Bradley to give her a tutorial on Hamlet, "the god of love and art, the Black Eros, the Black Prince" is unleashed with dire and terrifying results.

For the first time, novelist Iris Murdoch's life in her own words, from girlhood to her last yearsIris Murdoch was an acclaimed novelist and groundbreaking philosopher whose life reflected her unconventional beliefs and values. But what has been missing from biographical accounts has been Murdoch's own voice-her life in her own words. Living on Paper-the first major collection of Murdoch's most compelling and interesting personal letters-gives, for the first time, a rounded self-portrait of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers and thinkers. With more than 760 letters, fewer than forty of which have been published before, the book provides a unique chronicle of Murdoch's life from her days as a schoolgirl to her last years. The result is the most important book about Murdoch in more than a decade.The letters show a great mind at work-struggling with philosophical problems, trying to bring a difficult novel together, exploring spirituality, and responding pointedly to world events. They also reveal her personal life, the subject of much speculation, in all its complexity, especially in letters to lovers or close friends, such as the writers Brigid Brophy, Elias Canetti, and Raymond Queneau, philosophers Michael Oakeshott and Philippa Foot, and mathematician Georg Kreisel. We witness Murdoch's emotional hunger, her tendency to live on the edge of what was socially acceptable, and her irreverence and sharp sense of humor. We also learn how her private life fed into the plots and characters of her novels, despite her claims that they were not drawn from reality.Direct and intimate, these letters bring us closer than ever before to Iris Murdoch as a person, making for an extraordinary reading experience.

Traces the turbulent emotional journey of Martin Lynch-Gibbon, a smug, well-to-do London wine merchant and unfaithful husband, whose life is turned inside out when his wife leaves him for her psychoanalyst.

Finding himself surrounded by predatory friends and relations - his ex-wife, her delinquent brother, a younger, deplorably successful writer, Arnold Baffin, Baffin's restless wife and engaging daughter - Bradley attempts to escape.

Edward Lannion, the young master of Hatting Hall, is about to marry Marian Fox. Edward and Marian, the couple at the centre of the story, are led by events to learn the truth about themselves; It is Jackson who must intervene in the story to set the two young lovers onto the right path.

For years, Alfred Ludens has pursued mathematician and philosopher Marcus Vallar in the belief that he possesses a profound metaphysical formula, a missing link of great significance to mankind. Patrick Fenman, poet, is dying because he thinks Marcus has cursed him. Can human thinking discover the foundations of human consciousness?

Yvonne believes there's more to life than marriage to Sam, the young man who's courting her. But when she tries to have fun, she gets caught up in a fracas in a bar. Sam's idea of "something special" meanwhile is to take her to St Stephen's Green later that night to show her a ghostly tree!

As the Easter Rebellion looms, tension mounts in the rain-soaked streets of Dublin. His relentlessly pious mother pursues her own private war with his stepfather, a man sunk in religious speculation and drink. Meanwhile Pat's Protestant soldier cousin, Andrew Chase-White, puzzles out his complex emotions about Ireland and the girl he loves.

Saved from a delinquent childhood by education, cheated out of Oxford by a tragic love tangle, Hilary Burde cherishes his obsessive guilt and ekes out a living in a dull civil service job.

Iris Murdoch's first novel is set in a part of London where struggling writers rub shoulders with successful bookies, and film starlets with frantic philosophers. Jake is captivated by a majestic philosopher, Hugo Belfounder, whose profound and inconclusive reflections give the book its title - under the net of language.

These seven characters maintain a constant dance of attraction and repulsion, misunderstanding and revelation, the centre of which is the enigmatic Carel himself - a priest who believes that, God being dead, His angels have been released.

Henry and Cato is the story of two prodigal sons. Cato's father and his sister Colette wait anxiously to welcome Cato back to sanity after his dubious escapades. Henry's cool mother watches, Cato's impetuous sister intervenes. Blackmail and violence take a hand, and both Henry and Cato return home at last.

Sartre's powerful political passions were united with a memorable literary gift, placing him foremost among the novelists, as well as the philosophers, of our time.

Discover Murdoch's wonderful writing in this compelling story of a young woman and an unusual religious lay community. A lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home to an enclosed order of nuns.

Martin 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 re-education. Then he meets a woman whose demonic splendour at first repels him and later arouses a consuming and monstrous passion.

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.

Gertrude has lost her husband and Anne, an ex-nun, her God. They plan to live together and do good works. The 'Count', a Polish man in exile watches over Gertrude with loving patience. Tim, a failed painter, plans with his punk girlfriend to live off his rich friends. Who will judge whom in this intricate pattern of love and deceit?

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 and a different dream of life. Mor's teenage children and their mother fight discreetly and ruthlessly against the invader.

This is the story of the comic, relentless struggle for survival of Austin Gibson Grey, the accidental man. In this role we meet Dorina, Austin's estranged wife, Mitzi, his alcoholic landlady, and a selection of other women who involve themselves in Austin's fate, with hilarious and appalling results.

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.