The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch | Quarterly Conversation The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch Review by The Quarterly Conversation Iris Murdoch presents The Sea, the Sea to us in the form of a journal. The author, Charles Arrowby, is one of those lonely, socially upward men that lately J.M. Coetzee has excelled in describing; he is a somewhat famous actor and director who has retired to a creaky old house on a rocky promontory next to the sea. He tells us that he had decided to get away from London life once and for all, and to simply watch what remains of his life unwind before him. (Arrowby’s friends have their doubts that he can do it.) He also has vague ambitions to write a memoir, but his jottings start out unserious. For about 50 pages he muddles around, discussing his difficulties climbing out of the water and onto the steep, tide-battered rocks, the physical attributes of his new home and its environs, and his mother and father. In this section, Murdoch is admirably true to the journal form that she has selected.

Rather than jump into a narrative, she gracefully dangles a few questions before us (most notably, an actress hopelessly in love with Arrowby and some mysterious, idolized love from his youth) while giving her narrator enough room to thrash around and become bored. A lovely example of this comes near the beginning, when Arrowby sets out to describe his new home, but then gets entangled in ramblings on his culinary preferences: It gradually became clear to me that guzzling large quantities of expensive, pretentious, often mediocre food in public places was not only immoral, unhealthy and unaesthetic, but also unpleasurable. Later my guests were offered simple chez moi. What is more delicious than fresh hot buttered toast, with or without the addition of bloater paste? Or plain boiled onions with a little corned beef if desired? And well-made porridge with brown sugar and cream is a dish fit for a king. Even then some people, so sadly corrupt was their taste, took my intelligent hedonism for an affected eccentricity, a mere gimmick. These unformed, early sections connote the drift of Arrowby’s life and feel true to a retired man who has suddenly found the urge to write about himself.

They make clear that Murdoch has done more than simply frame her book as a journal; she is dedicated to miming the look and feel of such an artifact and exploring how the people who write journals interact with them and how the form shapes whatever narratives they contain. Importantly, these early sections present Arrowby to us without the life baggage that we will soon find out about—we are given a chance to get comfortable with Arrowby as a somewhat particular but nonetheless enjoyable man before Murdoch unleashes certain facts that will put him into a much darker light. The passages where he goes on about the virtues of simple cooking are almost cute, as is Arrowby’s awareness that all his friends gently mock him for being so particular. It’s important that Murdoch start out by presenting Arrowby like this, because as The Sea, the Sea progresses our tolerance for Arrowby is significantly tested; in my reading, without this initial getting-to-know-you my tolerance for the narrator would have been broken. Inevitably (this is, after all, a novel) Arrowby’s journal becomes a chronicle of the new course he sets his life on.

It’s not long before he receives a letter from Lizzie, an actress slightly younger than him whom he has been stringing along for some time now. It turns out that at some point before the story begins Arrowby tugged the string a bit with a letter to her. Two important things are revealed when Arrowby gets the letter—first, he is far more interested in seeing it than he’d like us to believe, and secondly, Lizzie’s letter is significant because it offers (after nearly 50 pages) our first view of Arrowby from the outside. In her letter, Lizzie bares her struggles to silence her love for Arrowby, and we can be quite confident our aging actor disdains her outpouring as gushy and feminine even as his ego is massaged by her clear need for him. Lizzie also says a number of things that Arrowby has never implied about himself; notably, she paints him as a womanizer, at one point declaring “you know you can’t keep your hands off women,” which conflicts sharply with Arrowby’s own claim that he has always treated the other sex fairly and is an “unsexed” individual.

Unreliable narrators are of course to be expected in the first-person and even more so in a book like The Sea, the Sea since it comprises a written account that is subject to whatever Arrowby’s sizable ego and fragile memory can do to muddy the waters. Nonetheless, Lizzie’s letter brings up just how crucial unreliable narration is to the fabric of Murdoch’s story. Up to this point Arrowby has alluded rather romantically and deterministically to a first love named Hartley who he idolizes as his only true love. He tells us that when he lost Hartley, all his future chances at happiness in a loving relationship were destroyed as well. He has a number of other women, but they are all sham relationships compared to the incandescence of his love for Hartley. Shortly after Lizzie’s letter, Arrowby tells us the full story: after several years of an adolescent relationship, this love ended when, at 18, Arrowby was left by Hartley for no apparent reason. Not long after Arrowby makes this admission, he dramatically discovers that by moving to his present home by the sea, he has unwittingly moved virtually next door to Hartley—and her husband of many years.

What occurs next, and what makes up the bulk of The Sea, the Sea is a protracted, slightly bizarre, attempt by Arrowby to break up the marriage and draw Hartley back. Arrowby’s justification relies in large part on his belief that he has proven that Hartley’s husband is a tyrant who keeps her locked into an abrasive, failed marriage. Once again unreliable narration becomes crucial. Though we only know the marriage based on what Arrowby—who has a well-known weakness for jealousy—chooses to tell us, it is nonetheless necessary that we decide the truth about Hartley’s marriage and determine our sympathy for Arrowby’s subsequent actions. How much of Arrowby’s harassment is permitted by the unhappy marriage justification? Do we believe that Arrowby has included everything he knows in his narrative (which is being written as it unfolds)? Has he accurately represented the marriage? Can he even know the full truth about it? These questions are crucial, as they mean the difference between a protagonist as home-wrecker and one who is somewhat justified, although still on shaky moral ground. For much of this story, our lack of knowledge is paralleled by Arrowby’s.

Jealous egotist that he is, he does at times question whether his manner of stealing Hartley is justified and whether he even knows the truth about Hartley’s marriage. Certainly he is working with limited information: Hartley gives him precious few details about her own life; moreover, she steadfastly (but in a manner that perhaps implies domination by her husband) refuses to leave her marriage. Here is the crux of The Sea, the Sea: Does Arrowby’s imperfect information plus his pre-existing weakness for leaping to conclusions let us conclude that he’s a fundamentally decent person whom we are seeing at his absolute worst? Or, is Arrowby simply a malignant old man trying to steal someone else’s happiness? Regardless of where one comes down on this question, it is true that Arrowby will test a reader’s sympathy. He is certainly one of the more disagreeable narrators I’ve read of late, and one of the challenges that Murdoch has as a novelist is staying true to Arrowby in all his distastefulness while leaving enough room for us to like him and keep him on as a narrator.

(At one point, despite Murdoch’s lovely prose and engaging plot twists, I was on the brink of putting the book down and forever concluding my relationship with Arrowby.) There’s also the fact that The Sea, the Sea is more tragedy than comedy. In a burlesque we might simply laugh at Arrowby and not care how scummy he is, but here Arrowby’s life is set as tragic. We have to care enough about him that his suffering is poignant, otherwise Arrowby’s story is simply ugly. I think that in the end Arrowby just barely remains sympathetic through the worst he can show us, and after that nadir he manages to sufficiently redeem himself to let us like him in a certain manner and let Murdoch conclude the novel. II. In a way, The Sea, the Sea is simply “about” deciding whether or not we like Charles Arrowby and watching Murdoch keep us off balance long enough that we get to find out, but in another way this novel is a thorough explanation of the way love perverts one’s life. In her letter to Arrowby, Lizzie tells him that after a difficult personal struggle she has finally managed to quiet her love for him.

She is deeply afraid of letting that love rise again and begs Arrowby not to impose himself on her. She knows that it will waken “forces which I commanded to sleep.” Yet, she can’t simply leave Arrowby alone: she hopes that they can “love each other, but not in a way that would destroy me.” The obvious irony here is that the old cad Arrowby gets a dose of his own medicine when his love for Hartley is awakened and almost destroys him, but I think in her exploration of love Murdoch is after more here than this simple demonstration of the Golden Rule. Arrowby’s and Lizzie’s stories have one important difference: whereas Lizzie’s entrapment is designed and provoked by Arrowby, Arrowby’s own entrapment comes about by an astonishing coincidence: he happens to move right next door to Hartley. This is so amazing that, in fact, it strains credulity. How could it be that Arrowby, who searched in vain for Hartley for years after she left him, would just happen to move next door to her late in life? Is it coincidence or fate? Much in The Sea, the Sea points toward the latter.

Throughout this novel there is a strong current of mysticism, although it is a very skeptical mysticism, one that is always quickly, but not convincingly, discounted. Early in the story, Arrowby records that he becomes terrified when he sees coil up out of the sea a horrible monster that looks like a giant, 30-foot eel. Eventually he puts it down to a flashback occasioned by his use of LSD once when he was younger, but the impression of something else remains. (Moreover, there is later evidence that the creature may exist.) Later, Arrowby is half-convinced there’s a poltergeist in his home when items start mysteriously breaking, but this turns out to be an old flame entertaining herself with a bit of playful malarkey. As these instances of something otherworldly slowly pile up like parts of some neo-Gothic novel, Arrowby’s older cousin James arrives at the house to bring the greatest mystical heft into the novel.

James has spent a great deal of his live traveling through Tibet while in the military; a Buddhist, he is deeply enmeshed in the ancient religious traditions he discovered there (his collection of artifacts is coveted by English museums), and yet he also says that things like the Indian rope trick or being able to change body temperature by force of will are simple “tricks” that anyone can learn. At one point the sea almost claims Arrowby’s life—it is James who saves him, and Arrowby’s clouded memory of the event leaves open the possibility that James utilized some sort of supernatural intervention. Seen in the light of all these instances of possible mysticism, one can choose to believe that the amazing coincidence of Arrowby moving next door to Hartley is yet another one of these ambiguous brushes with the mystical. It’s possible that what appears to be a clunky coincidence—the one flaw in an otherwise marvelously structured novel—is in fact quite purposeful. Perhaps in making Arrowby’s rediscovery of Hartley inexplicable, The Sea, the Sea is telling us that there are certain things about love that we simply can’t know.

The novel may be positing love as a force with its own logic, a logic of which we only see a small part, just as we only see a limited part of the mind that comprises Arrowby. In addition to telling Arrowby about the Indian rope trick and Tibetan mysticism, James also tells him about bardo, a sort of otherworldly holding pen for souls in between their trips on the wheel of life. It’s pretty explicitly stated that Arrowby’s life in between leaving London and re-discovering Hartley is a sort of earthly version of bardo, one that applies to lovers in between trips on the “wheel of love.” In other words, when we find Arrowby at the start of The Sea, the Sea, he is in a lonely, painful sort of place that he is destined to eventually be released from. This isn’t the only indication of bardo in The Sea, the Sea. At the novel’s end, after a short period of quiet solitude after Hartley, there’s some indication that Arrowby will again take another ill-fated venture on the wheel of love.

Also, over the course of the narrative a number of other of Arrowby’s friends (the most obvious of whom is Lizzie) all travel along their own arcs, falling in and out of love If one takes the parallel between the wheel of life and the wheel of love seriously, then this is further evidence that something is manipulating Arrowby’s love behind the scenes. Perhaps it is something mystical, but perhaps it is simply the unseen logic of a world too complicated for any one person to comprehend. All the arcs of love that occur throughout The Sea, the Sea are linked; all are dependent for their own completion on the actions that other people make while completing their own circuits. In that light, there is the possibility that the coincidence that brings together Hartley and Arrowby is mystical or earthly. In this beautiful, richly complex novel, Murdoch leaves open the possibility for either or both, but I wouldn’t say she leaves open the possibility for neither.

Read More on this Subject: The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch – review | Books | The Guardian Classics corner The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch – review The 1978 Booker prize-winning novel, featuring a theatre director who retires to the coast to write his memoirs, is a rich and textured study of vanity and self-delusion Iris Murdoch in 1978, the year she wrote The Sea, The Sea. Photograph: Jane Bown for the Observer Share on Messenger Close Charles Arrowby, celebrated theatre director, egomaniac and narrator of Iris Murdoch's 1978 Booker prize-winning novel, has retired to a remote Martello tower on the cliffs by the sea – a body of water by turns calm, raging and boasting the occasional, possibly hallucinated, monster. Arrowby is writing his memoirs, and his attempt to chronicle his successful career in the "histrionic arts", both on the boards and off, reveals a character that is part Pooter, part Proust and part Partridge, yet wholly Murdoch. Shruff End, as the atmospheric, oil lamp-lit house is named, is where Arrowby aims to become a hermit and reflect upon his life.

He details his marvellously revolting meals with the lyricism of a gourmand – salivating over Battenberg cake and prunes, and making quirky declarations: "Kipper fillets are arguably better than smoked salmon unless the latter is very good," and suchlike. These domestic pursuits, along with some tantalising recollections from his former life, keep him – and us – entertained for some time. But Arrowby's heart is patently not in the solitary life. "How huge it is, how empty, this great space for which I have been longing all my life," Arrowby writes, adding poignantly, "Still no letters." With nothing to do but "learning to be good", it is inevitable that Arrowby will create some drama even in this isolated spot; and this he does by attempting to draw his former lover Lizzie into his new life while trying to destroy the marriage of his childhood sweetheart, Hartley. Other visitors congregate at his new abode, shedding light on Arrowby's past and present: his Buddhist cousin, James (of whom he has always been profoundly jealous), and various theatrical ex-lovers and ex-friends.

Their relationships reveal the shallows of Arrowby's self-knowledge – as well as his ability to manipulate. Peppered with literary allusions, yet enjoyable on its own terms, the strongest echo in The Sea, The Sea is of Prospero and The Tempest. Murdoch's subtly, blackly humorous digs at human vanity and self-delusion periodically build into waves of hilarity, and Arrowby is a brilliant creation: a deeply textured, intriguing yet unreliable narrator, and one of the finest character studies of the 20th century. The Sea, the Sea - Iris Murdoch The Sea, the Sea Awarded the Booker Prize, 1978 - Return to top of the page - Our Assessment: The NY Rev. of Books . The NY Times Book Rev. B Maureen Howard From the Reviews: "Doch was folgt -- immerhin gut 500 Seiten --, demonstriert zwar Iris Murdochs Virtuosität, ihre Fähigkeiten, Knoten zu schürzen und zu sprengen, Fährten und Spuren anzulegen und wieder zu desavouieren - aber eine tiefere Teilnahme will sich nicht einstellen.

Selbst die Szenen des äußersten Schmerzes, ausgelöst durch den Ertrinkungstod eines Jungen, sehen uns als distanzierte Betrachter. Warum läßt mich das kalt ? fragt man, während man nervös, zwischen Unlust und Spannung, weiterliest." - Harald Hartung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung "Is it a genuine voice ? Not enough of one, I fear. Arrowby's dryness is really an unconvincing literary device. (...) The Sea, the Sea tends toward the doughy.

There is the genuine weight of obsession in Arrowby's narrative, but also the mere weight of iteration and ingenuity." - Martin Greenberg, The New York Times Book Review "Murdoch's subtly, blackly humorous digs at human vanity and self-delusion periodically build into waves of hilarity, and Arrowby is a brilliant creation: a deeply textured, intriguing yet unreliable narrator, and one of the finest character studies of the 20th century." - Sophia Martelli, The Observer "The author renders her immorality play with painstaking attention to atmosphere: the changing hues of the waves, the slippery amber rocks, the strangely damp house are all made palpable. The old scandals are shrewdly reexamined, and Murdoch's style is as saline as the sea below. Still she remains better at surfaces than at sounding depths." - Time Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole.

We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure. - Return to top of the page - The complete review 's Review: The Sea, the Sea is told by Charles Arrowby, a sixty-something actor, director, and playwright of some renown, recently retired. He has bought a place by the sea -- Shruff End, "upon a small promontory" --, hoping to abandon his old world and life. Writing is part of his escape: he pens his memoirs cum diary, recounting past and present. Past, it turns out, intrudes into present far more than he hoped. The house he bought is solitary and dilapidated. There isn't even any electricity. But it suits his purposes. Two things, above all else, preoccupy him: the sea (a central character throughout), and food. Many a menu is described by the would-be gourmet, though Arrowby's tastes differ greatly from most who highly value their food. But he enjoys himself. Arrowby never married (though there were quite a few women in his life) and he has almost no family.

He does have quite a few friends, however, and ex-lovers, who aren't quite willing to let him fade from view. A steady stream of visitors eventually makes its way to his house; there are even a few bottlenecks, as Murdoch crowds the scene. The most significant person, however, is one who had disappeared from Arrowby's life long ago: his lost first love, the woman he wanted to marry but who fled. It turns out that she -- Mary Hartley -- lives nearby. She is married, to Ben, but Arrowby believes she can not be happy with this simple man and becomes obsessed with saving her. A further complication arrives in the form of Titus, Ben and Mary's adopted son -- who Ben believes is actually Arrowby's son. Titus ran away from home and school, but reappears on the scene. Arrowby doesn't fit in particularly well among the town people, but he prefers to live in his odd isolation anyway. Still, he can't quite let go of his past -- even before he stumbles across Mary -- and his past won't let go of him either. Lovers, friends, and others come to bother him.

He does his best to shoo them away, but the house fills up steadily. One friend -- Gilbert -- even becomes his "house-serf", which proves quite convenient. Among the visitors -- occasional and repeated -- there are also the devoted (and occasionally obsessive) Lizzie and Rosina. There is Peregrine -- like most of the rest also an actor. And there is Arrowby's cousin James, an unlikely military man who is also a Buddhist. Arrowby's own obsession, with Mary, becomes the driving force to all his actions. He won't accept that they can't be together, and an odd psychological drama plays itself out. Arrowby, who usually can get any woman he wants to do his bidding, finds he has a harder time here. The sea is nearly ever-present -- at least as background, and occasionally as foreground. Characters do fall (or are pushed) in. Monsters are seen. Life is lost. And it is even responsible for re-births, of sorts. Actor Arrowby finds drama high and low -- and melodrama, and farce.

Shruff End turns out only to be a stage for all this to be played out on, over the course of a few acts; at the end Arrowby shuffles off and retires from it as well. The Sea, the Sea is an odd tale, veering dangerously towards the melodramatic. Arrowby's passion for Mary -- now plain, and settled in a different lifestyle, decades removed from the girl he loved -- comes very close to being beyond believable. Much of the action is slow, the drama somewhat artificial -- though admittedly reasonably done by the stage-managing Arrowby, who once wrote plays, who achieved fame for his direction. But he almost always only played bit parts in his greatest success, and here he is at the centre. Arrowby writes grandly much of the times -- Murdoch the stylist does not disappoint -- but parts of the story are a bit much for this character to carry. There are interesting scenes and characters (though some of his actor-friends are a bit rich). Parts of the novel are superb: the beginning, the toned-down postscript, and bits throughout. But the centre, Arrowby's obsession with his old flame and the actions it causes him to take, does not fully convince.

The Sea, the Sea is a fine novel, if ultimately somewhat disappointing. It does have a great deal to offer, but isn't a full success. - Return to top of the page - Iris Murdoch (Author of The Sea, the Sea) edit data Dame Jean Iris Murdoch Irish-born British writer, university lecturer and prolific and highly professional novelist, Iris Murdoch dealt with everyday ethical or moral issues, sometimes in the light of myths. As a writer, she was a perfectionist who did not allow editors to change her text. Murdoch produced 26 novels in 40 years, the last written while she was suffering from Alzheimer disease. "She wanted, through her novels, to reach all possible readers, in different ways and by different means: by the excitement of her story, its pace and its comedy, through its ideas and its philosophical implications, through the numinous atmosphere of her own original and created world--the world she must have glimpsed as she considered and planned her f Dame Jean Iris Murdoch Irish-born British writer, university lecturer and prolific and highly professional novelist, Iris Murdoch dealt with everyday ethical or moral issues, sometimes in the light of myths. As a writer, she was a perfectionist who did not allow editors to change her text.

Murdoch produced 26 novels in 40 years, the last written while she was suffering from Alzheimer disease. "She wanted, through her novels, to reach all possible readers, in different ways and by different means: by the excitement of her story, its pace and its comedy, through its ideas and its philosophical implications, through the numinous atmosphere of her own original and created world--the world she must have glimpsed as she considered and planned her first steps in the art of fiction." (John Bayley in Elegy for Iris, 1998) The Sea the Sea by Iris Murdoch - AbeBooks The Sea the Sea by Iris Murdoch You Searched For: Results (1 - 30) of 42 1 ISBN 10: 0140051996 ISBN 13: 9780140051995 Used Paperback Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Penguin, 1980. Paperback. Book Condition: AVERAGE. Paperback; English language; a fair reading copy. Your book will be securely packed and promptly dispatched from our UK warehouse.

For buyers outside the UK we now offer significantly lower rates on our airmail shipping. Bookseller Inventory # 05709jts029 THE SEA, THE SEA Murdoch, Iris Published by ( 26 other books by this author also available.) Orders shipped daily. Paperback.> Panther 1980 (500pp) (1980) Used ISBN 10: 009928409X ISBN 13: 9780099284093 New Paperback Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Paperback. Book Condition: New. Not Signed; WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN BURNSIDE When Charles Arrowby retires from his glittering career in the London theatre, he buys a remote house on the rocks by the sea. He hopes to escape from his tumultuous love affairs but unexpectedly bumps into his childhood sweetheart and sets his heart on destroyi. book.

Bookseller Inventory # ria9780099284093_rkm ISBN 10: 1841593702 ISBN 13: 9781841593708 New Hardcover Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Hardback. Book Condition: New. Not Signed; First published in 1961, The Severed Head is regarded is one of Iris Murdoch's most entertaining works. A dark and ferocious comic masterpiece, the novel traces the turbulent emotional journey of Martin Lynch-Gibbon, a smug, well-to-do London wine merchant and unfaithful husband, whose life is turne. book. Bookseller Inventory # ria9781841593708_rkm ISBN 10: 0140051996 ISBN 13: 9780140051995 Used PaperBack Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Penguin Books, 1980. PaperBack. Book Condition: Good.

Synopsis:-Charles Arrowby, leading light of England`s theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor, both professionally and personally, and amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors-some real, some spectral-that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core.-> this PaperBackbook was published by Penguin Books in 1980 it has 502 pages we have grade it as Good and Has A Few Scuffs Marks Etc Has Inscription writing or name it will be shipped from our UK warehouse shipping is Free for UK buyers and at a reasonable charge for buyer outside the UK. book. Bookseller Inventory # 9780140051995AG727 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: RANDOM HOUSE UK, 2015. Paperback. Book Condition: New. 11 x 18 cm.

'Time, like the sea, unties all knots' WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN BURNSIDE When Charles Arrowby retires from his glittering career in the London theatre, he buys a remote house on the rocks by the sea. He hopes to escape from his tumultuous love affairs but unexpectedly bumps into his childhood sweetheart and sets his heart on destroying her marriage. His equilibrium is further disturbed when his friends all decide to come and keep him company and Charles finds his seaside idyll severely threatened by his obsessions. Paperback. Bookseller Inventory # MM-43081948 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: RANDOM HOUSE UK, 1999. Paperback. Book Condition: New. 13.5 x 20.1 cm. "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. Paperback. Bookseller Inventory # MM-43000935 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Folio Society, London, 2009. Hardback. Book Condition: Fine. Tatsuro Kiuchi (illustrator). First Thus. 2009 First Thus. Fine Hardback. No inscriptions or bookplates. Very Good+ slipcase. Some marks to panels of slipcase. Introduced by John Sutherland. Book Illustrated by Tatsuro Kiuchi. Bound in buckram. Set in Ehrhardt. 512 pages; frontispiece and 8 colour illustrations. Book Size: 9" × 6¼". Taking his cue from The Tempest's Prospero, playwright and director Charles Arrowby leaves London for retirement in a coastal village to 'abjure magic and become a hermit'. Both seduced and unnerved by his new setting, he begins a journey of self-discovery by writing the story of his colourful theatrical life.

Finding himself in the same village as Mary Hartley, the first love of his adolescence whom he perceives is now locked in a brutal marriage, he becomes obsessed with the idea of forcing her to elope with him. The Sea, The Sea is uncompromisingly intelligent in scope and execution, superbly paced yet full of unexpected turns and quirks. It is also incisive on the issue of moral goodness, a subject to which Murdoch devoted so much of her life both as a writer and as a philosophy don at Oxford. This Folio edition, with haunting illustrations by Tatsuro Kiuchi, is a welcome reminder of why her literary standing remains so high. Booker Prize Winner 1978. UK Postage £3.10; Airmail to Europe £6.00; Airmail to Rest of the World £11.00. We only use airmail as surface mail can take up to 10 weeks. Bookseller Inventory # 107301 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Folio Society, London, 2009. Hardback. Book Condition: Fine. Tatsuro Kiuchi (illustrator). First Thus.

2009 First Thus. Fine Hardback. Sealed. No inscriptions or bookplates. Fine slipcase. Introduced by John Sutherland. Book Illustrated by Tatsuro Kiuchi. Bound in buckram. Set in Ehrhardt. 512 pages; frontispiece and 8 colour illustrations. Book Size: 9" × 6¼". Taking his cue from The Tempest's Prospero, playwright and director Charles Arrowby leaves London for retirement in a coastal village to 'abjure magic and become a hermit'. Both seduced and unnerved by his new setting, he begins a journey of self-discovery by writing the story of his colourful theatrical life. Finding himself in the same village as Mary Hartley, the first love of his adolescence whom he perceives is now locked in a brutal marriage, he becomes obsessed with the idea of forcing her to elope with him. The Sea, The Sea is uncompromisingly intelligent in scope and execution, superbly paced yet full of unexpected turns and quirks. It is also incisive on the issue of moral goodness, a subject to which Murdoch devoted so much of her life both as a writer and as a philosophy don at Oxford.

This Folio edition, with haunting illustrations by Tatsuro Kiuchi, is a welcome reminder of why her literary standing remains so high. Booker Prize Winner 1978. UK Postage £3.10; Airmail to Europe £6.00; Airmail to Rest of the World £11.00. We only use airmail as surface mail can take up to 10 weeks. Bookseller Inventory # 115682 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Chatto & Windus, London, 1978. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. Third Impression. Aqua coloured boards with gilt coloured titles to the backstrip. Colour illustrated dustwrapper, with black coloured titles to the front panel and back strip. A story of the strange obsessions that haunt a egocentric playwright and director as he begins to write his memoirs, in a lonely house by the sea. Rubbing of the book corners and lower book edges with softening of the back strip. There is a hint of a reading crease to the back strip.

Uniform tanning of the text block edges and age toning of the pages. Creasing to the top back strip edge and there is a small piece of the laminate missing to the lower right hand corner of the front panel. Light fading to the backstrip. Light browning of the verso of the dustwrapper and to the fold over panels. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. [8], 501, [3] pages. Binding is tight, covers and spine fully intact, but spine is faded/sunned. Please refer to accompanying picture (s). Quantity Available: 1. Category: Literature & Literary; ISBN: 0701123397. ISBN/EAN: 9780701123390. Inventory No: 0122834. Bookseller Inventory # 0122834 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Chatto & Windus, 1978. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very good. First Edition. Chatto & Windus, London 1978.

Hardcover FIRST edition, held in the original pictorial wrapper. Only very light age-toning & edgewear to the wrapper & has not been price-clipped. Bound into green cloth-effect boards with gilt stamped lettering to the spine. Faint dust-toning to the boards. Internally page bodies faintly age-toned, yet text remains sharp. Ownership signature to the front endpapers. Binding firm. DISPATCHED FROM THE UK WITHIN 24 HOURS ( BOOKS ORDERED OVER THE WEEKEND DISPATCHED ON MONDAY) BY ROYAL MAIL. ALL OVERSEAS ORDERS SENT BY AIR MAIL. Bookseller Inventory # mon0000492008 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Chatto & Windus, London, United Kingdom, 1978. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. True first British printing with original unclipped jacket (£5.50). Jacket has minor patchy edge/shelf wear and a few spots of light foxing to reverse (white side) which do not show through when on book.

Boards are very good with a little pushing/rubbing to head/tail of spine, a couple of minor bumps to edges (nothing much) and very minor pushing to corners. Pages are generally clean and the binding is tight. Previous owner's name in pen to front end-paper. Small mark to lower corner of a few pages. Top of pages slightly dusty with the odd small mark/spots of foxing. No other faults. A solid copy. All books described honestly and accurately. Paypal accepted. Bookseller Inventory # 002881 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Chatto & Windus, London, 1978. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good+. Stated second impression, 1978. An early British edition of the much-admired novel by Dame Iris Murdoch. This work was awarded the Booker Prize in 1978, and features the incredibly egotistical retired playwright and actor Charles Arrowby, who retires in a remote cottage by the sea. --- In full teal paper-covered boards, with gilt-stamped spine titling.

Jacket features front cover image of a high-cresting wave and Mount Fuji, a detail from a work by Katsushika Hokusai. The back of the jacket with a detail from a wall painting in the Golden Hall of the Horyu-ji in Nara, Japan. --- A clean, firm, unmarked copy but with yellowing to all leaves. Bright jacket with a little foxing at edges and w/price-clipped flap; in removable mylar protector. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 502 pages. Bookseller Inventory # 78345 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Chatto & Windus, 1978. Hardcover. Book Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. First edition, first impression of the 1978 Booker Prize winner. Near Fine: firm and square binding in sharp sea-green cloth; bright gilt; lightly rubbed to the spine tips; some tiny, sporadic spots to the top-edge of the page block, else bright, crisp and clean.

The unclipped, first-state dustwrapper is Very Good: bright and vibrant; wrinkling to the spine tips and a rub to one corner; tiny flakes to the surface by the top of the spine; a few faint spots to the front flap; presented in a removable, archival-quality Brodart protective cover. All orders are sent very carefully wrapped in bubble wrap and sturdy cardboard. Bookseller Inventory # A241 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Chatto & Windus, 1978. Hardcover. Book Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. First edition, first impression of the 1978 Booker Prize winner. Near Fine: tight and square binding in sharp sea-green cloth; bright gilt; lightly rubbed and pushed to the spine tips; tiny mark to the upper board; neat signature and contemporary date to the ffep, else bright, crisp and clean. The unclipped dustwrapper is Near Fine: bright and vibrant; wrinkling to the head of the spine and tanning to the top-edge of the flaps; 4mm closed nick to the top-edge of the front flap; presented in a removable, archival-quality Brodart protective cover.

All orders are sent very carefully wrapped in bubble wrap and sturdy cardboard. Bookseller Inventory # A203

Question: ‘The Sea, The Sea’ is a 1978 novel by which author?
Answer: Iris Murdoch