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A Severed Head

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9780099285366

  • Length: 224  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 14mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 159g

  • RRP: £10.99

A Severed Head

Martin believes he can possess both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover. But when his wife, Antonia, suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional re-education. He attempts to behave beautifully and sensibly. Then he meets a woman whose demonic splendour at first repels him and later arouses a consuming and monstrous passion. How will he survive it?

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9780099285366

  • Length: 224  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 14mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 159g

  • RRP: £10.99

Reviews

  • This is a comedy with that touch of ferocity about it which makes for excitement

    Elizabeth Jane Howard

  • Of all the novelists that have made their bow since the war she seems to me to be the most remarkable...behind her books one feels a power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist

    Sunday Times

  • Immensely readable...Miss Murdoch is blessedly clever without any of the aridity which, for some reason, that word is supposed to imply

    Philip Toynbee

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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.

Iris Murdoch

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Extracts

Living on Paper by Iris Murdoch

It is hard for us to imagine Iris Murdoch submitting her first novel – and not even having a title for it – but here, you can read the letter that accompanied the manuscript of Under The Net

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