The Sea, The Sea (Vintage Summer) - Softcover

The sea: turbulent and leaden, transparent and opaque, magician and mother... When Charles Arrowby, over sixty, a demi god of the theatre -- director, playwright and actor -- retires from his glittering London world in order to 'abjure magic and become a hermit', it is to the sea that he turns. He hopes at least to escape from 'the woman' -- but unexpectedly meets one whom he loved long ago. His buddhist cousin, James, also arrives. he is menaced by a monster from the deep. Charles finds his 'solitude' peopled by the drama of his own fantasies and obsessions.

Iris Murdoch was a writer and philosopher. She was born in Dublin in 1919 of Anglo-Irish parents. She went to school in Bristol, and read classics at Somerville College, Oxford. She later became a fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. Awarded the CBE in 1976, Iris Murdoch was made a DBE in the 1987 New Year's Honours List. She died in February 1999. Her husband John Bayley has written a bestselling memoir of his life with her called Iris and a major film based on this was released in 2001.