'In this holy community she would play the witch.'

Imber Court is a quiet haven for lost souls, a utopia for those who can neither live in the world, nor out of it. But beneath the gentle daily routines of this community run currents of supressed desire, religious yearning and a legend of disastrous love. Charming, indolent Dora arrives in their midst, and half-unwittingly conjures these submerged things to the surface.

'A tragi-comic masterpiece... a magnificent novel.' Susan Hill, The Lady

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SARAH PERRY

VINTAGE CLASSICS MURDOCH: Funny, subversive, fearless and fiercely intelligent, Iris Murdoch was one of the great writers of the twentieth century. To celebrate her centenary Vintage Classics presents special editions of her greatest and most timeless novels.

A novel that offers uplifting lessons in love - now republished as part of the Vintage Classics Murdoch Series - six gorgeous editions of her best, funniest and most subversive novels published to mark her centenary.

About the 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. Sarah Perry is the internationally best-selling author of the novels Melmoth, The Essex Serpent and After Me Comes the Flood, and the non-fiction Essex Girls. She is a winner of the Waterstone's Book of the Year Award and the British Book of the Year Award and has been nominated for major literary prizes including the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Folio Prize and the Costa Novel Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has a PhD in Creative Writing.

Reviews
She's writing about the only things that matter - love, goodness and how to be happy -- Patrick Gale * Independent *
The plot is both comical and moving, and it's a book that everyone who's ever been tempted to throw in the towel and become a hermit should read....despite the grand subjects at issue, the novel's tone is not at all dry or didactic - it is, on the contrary, wonderfully lively and poignant at the same time, tender with a sprightly social comedy reminiscent of PG Wodehouse and Barbara Pym -- Guardian
Her characters are described with loving exactitude and in such depth that their struggles to define what it means to live a good life take on dramatic force * New York Times *
How bloody good her novels are - how intelligent, how lucent, how divinely crazy. They're fun - I'd forgotten that -- Sarah Waters * Guardian *
Above all, she was a consummate story-teller, prodigiously inventive and generous, in the realist tradition of Dickens, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky * Independent *



Book Information
ISBN 9781784875206
Author Iris Murdoch
Format Paperback
Page Count 368
Imprint Vintage Classics
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 263g
Dimensions(mm) 178mm * 128mm * 22mm