Product Description

"The Black Prince" is both a remarkable thriller and a story about being in love. Bradley Pearson, narrator and hero, is an elderly writer with a 'block'. Finding himself surrounded by predatory friends and relations - his ex-wife, her delinquent brother, a younger, deplorably successful writer, Arnold Baffin, Baffin's restless wife and engaging daughter - Bradley attempts to escape. His failure to do so and its aftermath lead to a violent climax and a most unexpected conclusion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63158 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From the Publisher
It is witty and wise and provocative...brilliantly good' Evening Standard

From the Back Cover
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CANDIA MCWILLIAM

'Iris Murdoch's marvellous, heroic novel... A gloriously rich tale' The Times

The Black Prince is both a remarkable thriller and a story about being in love.

Bradley Pearson, narrator and hero, is an elderly writer with a 'block'. Finding himself surrounded by predatory friends and relations - his ex-wife, her delinquent brother, a younger, deplorably successful writer, Arnold Baffin, Baffin's restless wife and engaging daughter - Bradley attempts to escape. His failure to do so and its aftermath lead to a violent climax and a most unexpected conclusion.

See also: The Sea, The Sea

About the Author
Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919 of Anglo-Irish parents. She went to Badminton School, Bristol and read classics at Somerville College, Oxford. In 1948 she returned to Oxford where she became a fellow of St Anne's college. One of this century's finest and most influential novelists, and a distinguished philosopher, she was published by Chatto from her first novel, Under the Net in 1954 to her last, Jackson's Dilemma in 1995. Awarded the CBE in 1976, Iris Murdoch was made a DBE in the 1987 New Year's Honours List. She died in February 1999.

Customer Reviews

Aesthetics, Truth and the black Eros
Like many of Murdoch's novels, one is almost dismayed at the drab wretchedness of the narrator's life, which oddly enough, makes for compelling reading. Bradley Pearson is perhaps one of the most unsympathetic characters ever portrayed, petty, manipulative, jealous and cold and yet the reader finds himself in the uncomfortable position of sympathising with the man. It is here that the genius of this book lies. Providing an interesting, if somewhat unstructured 'extended essay' on aesthetics, Truth and the black Eros the novel is thought provoking and witty, not least in its final grim twist.
10/10

Splendid meditations on love and death
"The Black Prince" is my favorite novel, and I can recommend it unreservedly for its vivid characters, for its complexity, its wit, its drama, for its analysis of human failings and triumphs, loves and hates, and for its prose, which is ecstatic, biting, and brilliant. The ambiguously romantic Black Prince of the title, Bradley Pearson, is an aged bachelor, whose range of somewhat histrionic emotions involves the serene Rachel Baffin, her confused daughter Julian, Rachel's novelist husband Arnold, Bradley's rival in so many ways, Bradley's dysfunctional sister Priscilla, and Bradley's prying ex-wife Christian, who holds the possibility of solace and redemption. In amongst this tangled web they weave Bradley "meditates" on art and metaphysics, sleeping and waking, life and death. Iris Murdoch is the English authoress of a score of popular novels. Unlike the submissions of most writers who attempt to be popular, Ms. Murdoch's elegant fictions are literature, and are also aspirants to the semi-mythical realm of "art". And what is "art"? Is it not, in at least its principle manifestation, great entertainment? And I would assert that the greatness of the entertainment depends mightily upon the reader. I know a man who thinks, and says, that all of Iris Murdoch's books are alike. Very well. Emotional response is surely the beginning of literary criticism (otherwise why bother reviewing this book, or that one?). I identified with Bradley Pearson for several years of my life, and was jubilant that he lived in a world of funny, thoughtful, intensely interesting people, most of whom were not relatives. "Morality" (I put this fragile word between quotation marks because it is so often misused) is intimate to the Murdoch view of things, and the "eternal verities" are influential, even numinous, to all of her characters, including the thoughtless ones. Love, as a unifying force, is awake and vibrant. Beauty is our glimpse of the Godhead. Truth is a paradise into which we may freely pass, if only we have the desire to do so. Justice is as intimate as self-condemnation and as ruthless as violence. Abstractions, in the world of Iris Murdoch's characters, dissolve into human emotions that clarify the world and link us in splendid ways to other human animals. "The Black Prince" is a celebration of our ambiguous and splendid emotions. [November 28, 1996]

Brilliant - a witty page-turner (Yeah, Iris *CAN* do witty)
People who have never read a word Iris Murdoch has ever written, criticise her for being "difficult".

If any of them picked up The Black Prince", I would be amazed if they didn't enjoy it. The characters are hysterically funny at times - all with their own weird hang-ups. There are parts of the plot that make one cringe in the manner of a Fawlty Towers episode.

The one thing that surprised me is how well Iris Murdoch can write from a male perspective, so much so that one wonders how outraged the literati might have been if some of the physical descriptions of women had been written by a male writer.

Thoroughly recommended.