A Severed Head

Author:   Iris Murdoch ,  Miranda Seymour
Publisher:   Vintage Publishing
Edition:   New edition
ISBN:  

9780099285366


Pages:   224
Publication Date:   05 July 2001
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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A Severed Head


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Full Product Details

Author:   Iris Murdoch ,  Miranda Seymour
Publisher:   Vintage Publishing
Imprint:   Vintage Classics
Edition:   New edition
Dimensions:   Width: 12.90cm , Height: 1.40cm , Length: 19.80cm
Weight:   0.159kg
ISBN:  

9780099285366


ISBN 10:   0099285363
Pages:   224
Publication Date:   05 July 2001
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

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Reviews

A power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist. - Sunday Times <br> She is incapable of writing without fascinating and beautiful colour. - The Times


This is a comedy with that touch of ferocity about it which makes for excitement -- Elizabeth Jane Howard Of all the novelists that have made their bow since the war she seems to me to be the most remarkable...behind her books one feels a power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist Sunday Times Immensely readable...Miss Murdoch is blessedly clever without any of the aridity which, for some reason, that word is supposed to imply -- Philip Toynbee


Witty and sophisticated, this novel is set among London fogs, and drawing rooms filled with too many objects d'art, and conversations, where six characters spin an over-civilized danse macabre of love and manners. The effect is chilling and absorbing.... Middle-aged Martin Lynch-Gibbon has a lovely, older wife, Antonia, and a young mistress, Georgie, an economics lecturer. Martin is rich- a dilettante wine merchant and historian. He is also completely, terrifyingly spineless. When Antonia announces she wishes to marry their analyst-friend Palmer, Martin- with gruesome passivity ( the gentleman ) allows them to analyse him and their new relations, baby him, and re-arrange his new life. Soon Georgie, Martin's brother Alexander, and Palmer's sister, Honor Klein, are drawn into the situation. And the shifting emotions and love affairs, the relentlessly understanding little talks , take on the queer, fascinating quality of group incest. The only person who stays aloof is Honor Klein. Strong, ugly, appearing only in critical moments to force the others into uglier truths, she soon acquires, for Martin, the terrible appeal of a goddess- of Medusa's severed head. In scene after shocking scene, the players are stripped of their illusions, altered, and finally go off to resume their lives elsewhere, on other terms, and with other, different members of the group. It is superbly done- and genuinely horrifying. (Kirkus Reviews)


A wonderful black comedy which was turned into a play and also filmed. A group of London intellectuals living in an emotionless society find their primitive passions stirred into action by an intruder. (Kirkus UK)


Author Information

Iris Murdoch (Author) 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. Miranda Seymour (Introducer) Miranda Seymour is the author of the innovative and widely admired Ring of Conspirators, a study of Henry James and his circle, and of the acclaimed biography Ottoline Morrell- Life on the Grand Scale, twelve times selected as book of the year for 1992. She also writes novels and children's books. She lives in London.

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