Iris Murdoch

Author

Iris Murdoch was an Irish-British novelist and philosopher whose twenty-six novels explore love, morality, freedom, and the complexity of human relationships with unmatched intelligence and invention. Born in Dublin in 1919, she grew up in London, studied Classics and Philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford, worked with refugees in... post-war Europe, and became a fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford, where she taught philosophy for fifteen years. Murdoch's novels include Under the Net, The Bell, A Severed Head, The Sea The Sea (which won the Booker Prize), The Black Prince, and The Good Apprentice. The Bell, set in a lay religious community beside a Gloucestershire lake, is one of her most accessible and beloved novels — a story about faith, desire, and the impossibility of living up to our ideals. Her fiction combines philosophical depth with Gothic plotting, sexual intrigue, and a cast of memorable, often maddening characters. She published her final novel in 1995, before Alzheimer's disease ended her creative life. She died in 1999. Her audiobooks and books offer listeners and readers fiction of extraordinary intellectual and emotional richness — novels that take both ideas and desire seriously. Read more Show less