Böcker 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.

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.

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.

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 Previously unpublished but for an excerpt in a 1950s anthology, this is a bittersweet, haunting story.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

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.

A brilliant mythical drama about well-meaning people trapped in a war of spiritual forcesMarian 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.

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.

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.

Hilda Foster is alone in an isolated cottage when she receives an important telephone call.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Edmund has escaped from his family into a lonely life. He returns home for his mother's funeral and finds himself involved in the same awful problems he left behind, together with some new ones. He also rediscovers the eternal family servant, the ever-changing "Italian girl".4 women, 3 men

JB Priestley''s adaptation of Iris Murdoch''s A Severed Head.|4 women, 3 men

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.

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.

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.