A Message to the Planet - Couverture rigide

Murdoch, Iris

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0701134798 ISBN 13 : 9780701134792

Editeur : Chatto & Windus, 1989

Synopsis

Iris Murdoch's 24th novel, published in her 71st year, tells of Alfred Ludens' long search for Professor Marcus Vallar, convinced he possesses a secret fundamental to the human condition. But is Vallar a genius, a madman or a saint? What Ludens discovers is certainly not what he expects.

A propos du livre

Quatrième de couverture

'I suspect that when the intellectual map of our own times comes to be sketched out, Iris Murdoch will occupy a position analogous to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky...Murdoch writes better than anyone living about the condition of being in love; both the ecstatic joys of it and its capacity to turn otherwise decent individuals into monsters of selfishness and cruelty...Her vision of the world is heart-rending, but ultimately celebratory' A.N. Wilson, Guardian

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.

Ludens's friends are more sceptical.Jack Sheerwater, painter, thinks Marcus is crazy.Gildas Herne, ex-priest, thinks he is evil.Patrick Fenman, poet, is dying because he thinks Marcus has cursed him.Marcus has disappeared and must be found.But is he a genius, a hero struggling at the bounds of human knowledge?Is he seeking God, or is he just another victim of the Holocaust, which casts its shadow upon him and upon Ludens, both of them Jewish?Cool common sense is provided by the women: Franca, Jack's wife, Alison, his mistress, feminist Maisie Tether, and Irina, Marcus's eccentric daughter.Can human thinking discover the foundations of human consciousness? Iris Murdoch's endlessly inventive imagination has touched a fundamental question of our time.

' The Message to the Planet is a highly wrought a work of art as Dame Iris has yet given us' Spectator

Biographie de l'auteur

Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919. She read Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, and after working in the Treasury and abroad, 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. Until her death in 1999, she lived in Oxford with her husband, the academic and critic, John Bayley. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 and in the 1997 PEN Awards received the Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature.

Iris Murdoch made her writing debut in 1954 with Under the Net. Her twenty-six 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). Her philosophy includes Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953) and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992); other philosophical writings, including The Sovereignty of Good (1970), are collected in Existentialists and Mystics (1997).

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Chatto & Windus
• Date d'édition: 1989
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0701134798
• ISBN 13: 9780701134792
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 563
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible