A Fairly Honourable Defeat

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. Everyone is thinking about Julius King. For comfortable, long-married Hilda and Rupert, he is a mystery. For Morgan, Hilda''s tormented sister, he is an obsession. For Morgan''s abandoned husband, Tallis, he is the source of ruin. For Simon and Axel, deeply in love, he stirs up jealousy and unease. What is Julius thinking about? He''s thinking about Hilda, Rupert, Morgan, Tallis, Simon and Axel, and they will not all survive his malevolent attention. ''The most important novelist writing in my time'' A. S. Byatt‘Murdoch’s art was expansive, non-autobiographical and insistently inventive’Daily Telegraph‘Above all, she was a consummate story-teller, prodigiously inventive and generous’IndependentWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GARTH GREENWELL