Two major novels--ferociously dark comedies that combine playfulness and profundity--by one of the most influential British writers of the twentieth century, in an Everyman’s Library
Contemporary Classics hardcover.
A Severed Head (1961) is one of Iris Murdoch’s most entertaining works, tracing the turbulent emotional journey of Martin Lynch-Gibbon, a smug, well-to-do London wine merchant and
unfaithful husband, whose life is turned inside out when his wife leaves him for her psychoanalyst. The Sea, the Sea (1978) is set in an isolated house on the edge of England’s North
Sea, where egotistical Charles Arrowby, a big name in London’s glittering theatrical world, has retired to write his memoirs, and where his plans begin to unravel when he encounters his
long-lost first love and is increasingly besieged by his fantasies and obsessions. Tragi-comic masterpieces, brooding and hilarious, these two novels brilliantly reveal how much our lives are
governed by the lies we tell ourselves and by our all-consuming need for love, meaning, and redemption.
Introduction by Sarah Churchwell
