The Novels of Iris Murdoch Volume One: Henry and Cato, The Italian Girl, and The Philosopher's Pupil

by Iris Murdoch

Three sharply observed novels from the “prodigiously inventive” Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Sea, The Sea (The New York Times).   “One of the most significant novelists of her generation” (The Guardian) and a “consummate storyteller” (The Independent), British author Iris Murdoch grappled with questions of morality as well as the nature of love in novels that are every bit as entertaining as they are thought provoking. Over the span of her career, she was the recipient of the Man Booker Prize, the Whitbread Literary Award, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.  Henry and Henry Marshalson and Cato Forbes were inseparable childhood friends. But their lives took different paths. Henry went to the United States to teach art history. Cato became a priest. When Henry’s brother dies, leaving him sole heir to his family’s vast estate, he returns to England, and the two friends reconnect. As Henry struggles to come to terms with his personal passions and family obligations, Cato fights against his religious doubts and darker urges. Soon, both men find themselves entwined in a deadly intrigue that could ruin not only their lives but also the lives of those they hold dear.   “Murdoch’s finest novel.” —Joyce Carol Oates  The Italian After a long absence, Edmund Narraway has returned to his childhood home to attend his mother’s funeral. The visit rekindles feelings of affection and nostalgia, but also triggers a resurgence of the tensions that caused him to leave in the first place. As Edmund once again becomes entangled in his family’s web of corrosive secrets, his homecoming tips a precariously balanced dynamic into sudden chaos.   “[An] inbred story of modern life . . . a ritual of innocence and corruption . . . accomplished with many dark fancies, sudden surprises and arcane implications.” —Kirkus Reviews  The Philosopher’s The quiet English town of Ennistone is shaken up when George McCaffrey’s car plunges into the cold waters of a canal, carrying with it his wife—and when the village’s most celebrated son, famed philosopher John Robert Rozanov, returns, upending the lives of everyone with whom he comes in contact, in this New York Times Notable Book.   “The most daring and original of all her novels.” —A. N. Wilson

1342 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 8, 2018

About the author

Dame Jean Iris Murdoch

Irish-born British writer, university lecturer and prolific and highly professional novelist, Iris Murdoch dealt with everyday ethical or moral issues, sometimes in the light of myths. As a writer, she was a perfectionist who did not allow editors to change her text. Murdoch produced 26 novels in 40 years, the last written while she was suffering from Alzheimer disease.

"She wanted, through her novels, to reach all possible readers, in different ways and by different means: by the excitement of her story, its pace and its comedy, through its ideas and its philosophical implications, through the numinous atmosphere of her own original and created world--the world she must have glimpsed as she considered and planned her first steps in the art of fiction." (John Bayley in Elegy for Iris, 1998)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Mur...