Where to start with Iris Murdoch: a guide to her best novels
Iris Murdoch wrote 26 novels, seven of which were nominated for a Booker Prize, but with so many great books to choose from, where should you start?
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin and made her writing debut with Under the Net in 1954. She wrote 26 novels and several books of philosophy.
She read Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, and was awarded a research studentship in Philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1948 she returned to Oxford as fellow and tutor at St Anne’s College and later taught at the Royal College of Art. Her 26 novels include the Booker prize-winning The Sea, The Sea (1978), the James Tait Black Memorial prize-winning The Black Prince (1973) and the Whitbread prize-winning The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974). Iris Murdoch had a number of other novels on the long and shortlists for the Booker Prize over the years, including A Fairly Honourable Defeat which was longlisted for The Lost Man Booker Prize.
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Watch Iris Murdoch on writing fiction
Winner The Booker Prize 1978
- By
- Iris Murdoch
- Published by
- Chatto & Windus
Iris Murdoch turns her microscopic gaze on vanity and obsession in her 19th novel, which won the Booker Prize in 1978.
Other nominated books
An exploration of love and its excesses, missteps, and modest triumphs.
A government official lies dead - but awkward questions around his supposed suicide remain in Iris Murdoch’s thriller-meets-romantic comedy.
Obsessed with spiders and preoccupied with death, an old man lies at the centre of Iris Murdoch’s intricate web of relationships and passions.
Iris Murdoch’s 15th novel is part-thriller, part-love story: a book that explores the intricacies and inconsistencies of human relationships.
Through the spiritual trials of two troubled stepbrothers, Iris Murdoch conducts an inventive allegorical exploration of morality.
Iris Murdoch explores the fragility of relationships. Thirty years is plenty of time for friends to change their opinions. Not least of each other.
