 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Iris Murdoch |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Cathie Felstead [1] |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
Publication date | 1983 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 576 |
| ISBN | 0-7011-2682-5 |
The Philosopher's Pupil is a 1983 novel by the British writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch. It is set in a small English spa town called Ennistone.
George McCaffrey cannot understand why his long-ago philosophy professor told him to pick another field of study. But that professor, John Robert Rozanov, is returning to Ennistone where George lives, giving George the chance to ask him and finally understand. John Robert, the only famous person to have originated from Ennistone, will have none of it, simply telling George "you weren't good enough" and bringing the conversation to a close as quickly as he can, given George's desperate attempts to continue. John Robert has returned to Ennistone for an entirely different purpose, indeed one that disincentivizes further effort at socially graceful tolerance of George's neuroses.
As a part of that purpose, John Robert wishes to arrange the future of his granddaughter Hattie Meynell, without her knowledge, by encouraging Tom McCaffrey, George's younger step brother, to woo Hattie, and then to marry her. But during their first meeting, when Tom clumsily lets on that his meeting request was not entirely the result of his own initiative and interest in Hattie, she reacts with hurt and anger. Through a sequence of plot twists, Tom finds himself trapped deep beneath the spa for which Ennistone is famous. As in many Murdoch novels, this physical struggle for survival parallels the characters' struggle to resolve their complex, interwoven emotional issues.
Dame Jean Iris Murdoch was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net (1954), was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Her 1978 novel The Sea, the Sea won the Booker Prize. In 1987, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked Murdoch twelfth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
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