A Fairly Honourable Defeat : Vintage Classics - Iris Murdoch

A Fairly Honourable Defeat

Vintage Classics

By: Iris Murdoch

Paperback | 25 April 2002 | Edition Number 1

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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.

About the Author

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, and 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. Since her writing debut in 1954 with Under the Net, Iris Murdoch has written twenty-six novels, including the Booker Prize-winning The Sea, The Sea (1978) and most recently The Green Knight (1993) and Jackson's Dilemma 91995). Other literary awards include the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 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 has written several plays including The Italian Girl (with James Saunders) and The Black Prince, adapted from her novel of the same name. Her volume of poetry, A Year of Birds, which appeared in 1978, has been set to music by Malcolm Williamson.
Industry Reviews
The most important novelist writing in my time * A.S. Byatt *
A distinguished novelist of a very rare kind * Kingsley Amis *
Of all the novelists that have made their bow since the war she seems to me to be the most remarkable-behind her books one feels a power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist * Sunday Times *

Other Books By Iris Murdoch

The Sovereignty of Good : Routledge Classics - Iris Murdoch
The Bell : Vintage Classics Murdoch Series - Iris Murdoch
The Sea, The Sea : Vintage Classics Murdoch Series - Iris Murdoch
Under the Net : Vintage Classics - Iris Murdoch
The Philosopher's Pupil : Vintage Classics - Iris Murdoch
The Nice and the Good : Vintage Classics - Iris Murdoch
An Unofficial Rose : Vintage Classics - Iris Murdoch
Nuns and Soldiers : Vintage Classics - Iris Murdoch
A Word Child : Vintage Classics - Iris Murdoch
The Red and the Green : Vintage Classics - Iris Murdoch
The Time of the Angels : Vintage Classics - Iris Murdoch
An Accidental Man : Vintage Classics - Iris Murdoch
The Italian Girl : Vintage Classics - Iris Murdoch