The Message To The Planet

The Message To The Planet

Summary

For years, Alfred Ludens has pursued mathematician and philosopher Marcus Vallar in the belief that he possesses a profound metaphysical formula, a missing link of great significance to mankind.

Luden's friends are more sceptical. Jack Sheerwater, painter, thinks Marcus is crazy. Gildas herne, ex-preist, thinks he is evil. Patrick Fenman, poet, is dying because he thinks Marcus has cursed him. Marcus has disappeared and must be found.

But is he a genius, a hero struggling at the bounds of human knowledge? Is he seeking God, or is he just another victim of the Holocaust, which casts its shadow upon him and upon Ludens, both of them Jewish?

Can human thinking discover the foundations of human consciousness?

Iris Murdoch's endlessly inventive imagination has touched a fundamental question of our time.

Reviews

  • She was a brilliantly clever woman
    Dame Judi Dench

About the author

Iris Murdoch

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.
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