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The Black Prince (Penguin Classics) by [Iris Murdoch, Martha C. Nussbaum]

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Iris Murdoch

The Black Prince (Penguin Classics) Kindle Edition

by Iris Murdoch (Author), Martha C. Nussbaum (Introduction) Format: Kindle Edition

4.2 415 ratings

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Bradley Pearson, an unsuccessful novelist in his late fifties, has finally left his dull office job as an Inspector of Taxes. Bradley hopes to retire to the country, but predatory friends and relations dash his hopes of a peaceful retirement. He is tormented by his melancholic sister, who has decided to come live with him; his ex-wife, who has infuriating hopes of redeeming the past; her delinquent brother, who wants money and emotional confrontations; and Bradley's friend and rival, Arnold Baffin, a younger, deplorably more successful author of commercial fiction. The ever-mounting action includes marital cross-purposes, seduction, suicide, abduction, romantic idylls, murder, and due process of law. Bradley tries to escape from it all but fails, leading to a violent climax and a coda that casts shifting perspectives on all that has preceded.

Print length

418 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Penguin Classics
Publication date

March 25, 2003
Reading age

18 years and up
Grade level

12 and up
File size

1036 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"One of her best . . . She offers an unusual compound of pleasures: ingenious storytelling, elegant design, the provocations of myth and philosophy." —Lawrence Graver, The New York Times

"An entertainment, but also a profoundly great work of art . . . It’s hard to keep my enthusiasm for it quiet—it’s such a delightful and deep book at the same time." ―John Williams, The New York Times Book Review (podcast)

"The most self-revelatory . . . of all her dark comedies." —The Guardian

"[A] marvelous, heroic novel [and] a gloriously rich tale." —The Times (London)

"A source of wonder and delight . . . No summary can do justice to the rich intricacy of character and incident with which Miss Murdoch crowds every page." —Spectator

"This is great Murdoch . . . Her humour is all the more achingly funny because she keeps it on the edge of our vision." —The Daily Mail

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. During the war she was an Assistant Principal at the Treasury, and then worked with UNRRA in London, Belgium and Austria. She held a studentship in philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge, and then in 1948 she returned to Oxford, where she became a Fellow of St Anne's College. Until her death in February 1999, she lived with her husband, the teacher and critic John Bayley, in Oxford. Awarded the CBE in 1976, Iris Murdoch was made a DBE in the 1987 New Year's Honours List. In the 1997 PEN Awards she received the Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature. Iris Murdoch made her writing debut in 1954 with Under the Net, and went on to write twenty-six novels, including the Booker prize-winning The Sea, The Sea (1978). Other literary awards include the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Black Prince (1973) and the Whitbread Prize (now the Costa Book Award) for The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974). Her works of philosophy include Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992) and Existentialists and Mystics (1997) She wrote several plays including The Italian Girl (with James Saunders) and The Black Prince, adapted from her novels of the same name. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004ELA59M
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; Reprint edition (March 25, 2003)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 25, 2003
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1036 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 418 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #336,104 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #410 in British & Irish Literary Fiction
- #1,057 in Classic American Literature
- #1,164 in Romance Literary Fiction

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4.2 415 ratings

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Iris Murdoch

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Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) was one of the most influential British writers of the twentieth century. She was awarded the 1978 Booker Prize for The Sea, The Sea, won the Royal Society Literary Award in 1987, and was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 by Queen Elizabeth. Her final years were clouded by a long struggle with Alzheimer's before her passing in 1999.

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Skevos Mavros

Terrific thriller/love story written by a philosopher, but fine for a casual reader.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 16, 2020

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This was my first time reading an Iris Murdoch novel, and it won't be my last. She has managed to create a central character, the writer and former tax man Bradley Pearson, who possesses many unforgivable flaws, yet this reader was still (mostly) able to sympathise with him. This is partly because Murdoch surrounds poor doomed Bradley with other equally flawed characters that inflict suffering upon him. Naturally, at every plot turn Bradley could have made much better decisions, but his foolishness only increased my sympathy for him.

It is hard to go much further in this review without spoiling several moments of this thriller/love story, but what I will say is that the sections in the novel that digress away from the plot to explore Bradley's philosophical musings on life, art, love, and writing are, in my humble opinion, just long enough to be interesting but not long enough to be infuriating. No one will agree with everything the novel has to say on these topics, but Bradley's/Murdoch's insights are pretty consistently interesting.

I particularly enjoyed the postscripts at the end of the novel, five of them written by other characters from the novel. These postscripts provide, depending on your opinion of Bradley, corrective points of view to his version of events, or yet more evidence that the people in his life were self-centred narcissists. Both, of course, could be true.

Technical kindle stuff : This kindle edition only had a tiny number of typos, which is pretty good these days - so many pre-digital novels are riddled with typos when converted to kindle these days, so this conversion of an early 1970's novel was clearly done with care.

My only real quibble is with an odd error in the edition I bought on kindle. The kindle store said the introduction was written by Sophie Hannah (it still says this), but after buying and downloading I see that the introduction in my edition was actually written by Candia McWilliam. I enjoyed Ms McWilliam's introduction, but it was an odd error to see from an established publisher. Is there another edition floating around in the virtual kindle shelves?

6 people found this helpful

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Carolyn

What fun!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 28, 2022

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I thought it was about time I read an Iris Murdock novel. It was fun through and through. The writing is wonderful and although it may feel a bit dated to some of us it was a sheer delight. I read every word right up to the shocking end

8 people found this helpful

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Christin M. Mulligan

Maudlin Nabokov Knockoff

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 3, 2015

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Granted, I did not pick this book, but I did blindly and eagerly consent based on the fact that I had heard of Murdoch's work and as a result of my experience with other British/Irish women novelists being so rich and rewarding, assumed I would love it. Oh, folly! Iris Murdoch is a philosopher (and a lover of Sartre, worst offender of all, if you ask me), and I generally make it a rule never to read the novels of philosophers because they know s*** about character development and even less about plot. Now, mind, as a lover of Joyce and Woolf, I can worship and venerate a plotless novel like it's my job (which it kind of is) as long as there is some lyricism and some wordplay. Not so <i> The Black Prince </i>. Now, all the faux editorial prefaces and postscripts would suggest that I am supposed to hate Bradley and feel that the narrative has no centre. But I hated everyone from the vacillating, talentless Baffins to whining homosexual stereotype Francis Marloe. It's 1973: take a Valium, see a therapist. As such, I resented the hell out of this novel: its endless pontificating on art and existentialism, its mangling of Shakespeare and Dante, its endless reliance on Freudian paradigms only to ridicule them ex-post-facto. I don't see how creating a cast of miserable, despondent, self-obsessed people merits a place on the Booker Shortlist. I learned nothing from this book and will never read her again. It could've done with a lot more preface/postscipts and a lot less novel. Bottom line: lame.

11 people found this helpful

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Barry C.

Annoying editing is slowing me down, but I'm still slogging.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 22, 2015

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I'm half-way thru this book, and I'm annoyed and distracted by the sloppy editing (misspellings, especially) and the quirk of hyphenation that turns, for example "absent-minded goings-on". into "absent - minded goings - on". A big deal? No, a petty complaint. But she does a whole lot of such compounding, and they're all this way. (Kindle edition)

Ok, I read it, and I'm dazzled. This is a philosophy text hiding in a love story which becomes a murder story. Then everything you've come to believe about what has happened and why gets overturned (maybe) in the postscripts. Read it. Several times. Then read the introduction again.

2 people found this helpful

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Steven E. Sanderson

Art, Truth, Love, Murder and Narcissism

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 19, 2018

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This is a classic work, dealing with the meaning of life, of personal relationships, the inability of an individual to understand his life or his connection to others, and the fundamental dishonesty with which people make their way in the world. Murdoch writes beautifully, evoking the eternal verities, even as she populates her book with self-seeking ninnies. Bradley Pearson tells the story, and the story is about himself: neurotic, puritan, naive, and weak. He is so convincingly tiresome that the book begins to flag toward the end of Part Two. That itself may have been one of the many strokes of brilliance Murdoch has in store. A strange, powerful read.

10 people found this helpful

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Roland Droitsch

EVENTUALLY THE PART ABOUT HOW THE MAIN CHARACTER (58 YEARS OLD) FALLS IN LOVE WITH A YOUNG LADY (20 YEARS OLD) IS A ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 17, 2014

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THIS IS A DIFFICULT BOOK TO DESCRIBE. THERE ARE PARTS THAT I FEEL ARE TOO LONG AND DETAILED BUILDING UP THE BOOKS CHARACTERS. EVENTUALLY THE PART ABOUT HOW THE MAIN CHARACTER (58 YEARS OLD) FALLS IN LOVE WITH A YOUNG LADY (20 YEARS OLD) IS A PART OF THIS BOOK THAT I FIND INTERESTING. THERE IS A BIT OF "LOLITA" IN IT, BUT THE YOUNG LADY JULIAN PARTICIPATES STRONGLY IN THIS "AFFAIR". THEN THE END COMES WITH HIS BEING ACUSED OF A MURDER( WHICH HE DID NOT COMMIT, AND HE IS SENT TO JAIL WHERE HE EVENTUALLY DIES. HENCE THERE WERE PARTS THAT I LIKED, BUT OTHERS NOT. IT IS A LONG BOOK AND I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND IT IF YOU ARE SEEKING CONTINUOUS ACTION.

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Ted in LA

Great Novel, but This Edition is Flawed

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 24, 2016

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A delightful novel for Murdoch fans. However, this edition appears to be an offset of an offset of an offset, so that the text is swollen to the point that it's difficult to read. I suggest getting a copy of a previous edition, even if it's used.

3 people found this helpful

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Scaramouse

A work of towering intellect and majesty

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 3, 2019

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It took me a long time to find Iris Murdoch. Perhaps I was afraid of what I might find - when someone has read a lot of books, it is almost too overwhelming to admit that there is yet one more author who will change your life. But here I am, working through the great writer's oeuvre, and in a state of almost constant awe and admiration. The Black Prince, for example, is a remarkable work that fuses story, poetry, philosophy, psychology into a pulsing fire of creative magic. It reads like a thriller - it is a thriller, in one sense - but no hack thriller writer ever digressed in the way Murdoch does to discuss art, love, marriage, life, men and women; the Black Prince is, however, "unputdownable." A brief review hardly skims the surface of its fascinating depths, but before you look away in boredom, let me say - I'm finished. The Black Prince is simply a book everyone - everyone who strives to understand the world - must read.

14 people found this helpful

Henry the Hedgehog

What a book, my Word, what a book!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 14, 2020

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It is the best novel I have read. Deep and brilliant. Iris Murdoch rises up into a class above her other works.
It is about love and illusions.
Written in four parts, the first part (which is half the book) is outstanding in its use of language and poetic concepts. The second part is a meditation on love, which some might not appreciate. The third part is indescribably thrilling and grips a part of you that never existed before having read the second part. The 4th part is the denouement that smashes illusions with illusions.
And all the while there is a penetrative description of life; the complexities of our ordinary lives brought out into awful conscious truth. To be read behind the sofa with eyes nearly shut. It's about you and me and everyone who has ever loved another to the edge of insanity.
There are parts that I couldn't follow, but they fascinate me enough to read it all again with a reference book beside me. I delighted in the philosophical parts of it that explored the ground of our Being. It seems to be written by a male, but of course, it's not. She writes about women which a Western man would never be 'allowed' to write these days.
Although it is 'dark', in that it reveals terrible truths of living, it is a work of genius that very few authors are capable of achieving.

(Although life as a hedgehog can be prickly at times, it is much less complicated and unembellished than a human's lot in the Murdoch world.)

7 people found this helpful

Glilla Bear

French Farce.... and a cruel one

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 15, 2022

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Nobody reveres Iris Murdoch more greatly than I do. However, I tried to read "The Black Prince" in the 80s, and failed. I saw the Aldwych dramatization in the same decade, and disliked it. The title's allusion to Hamlet eludes me, I am afraid.
I decided last month to give it another go. Fundamentally it is the cruel exposure of the weaknesses of each of a group of unpleasant individuals who, in various ways, are involved with one another. The narrative is often funny. The narrator, Bradley Pearson, intermittently - sometimes very lengthily - addresses the reader direct, in analytical mode, about "The World", and more especially, his own situation (with which he is obsessed) - a device to which I thoroughly object. Four characters, in voice indistinguishable, add futile, if vaguely informative, "Postscripts". The book is not formally a true novel, therefore. Not recommended, even to those of philosophical inclination. Pity. I shall not return to "The Black Prince".

One person found this helpful

Kindle Customer

RA

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 1, 2022

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A literary failure? Metafiction, modernism or postmodernism? I almost gave up, finding myself frustrated at rambling sections; but I became mesmerised by this story of a very irritating and irritable character. Why did everyone want a piece of him (or all of him)? Or did he imagine they did? The male voice was acutely strong and well performed. At times it was like a play, or a sitcom. It seems like literature, yes. And I believe you, Bradley. I do.

One person found this helpful

ES in London

Unlike anything I have ever read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 15, 2021

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At times very funny, this book has left me thinking. I enjoyed it, the writing is deft and fluent. Murdoch captures several times of voice brilliantly as the plot swerves around, taking our sympathies on a journey. My loyalties shifted several times and I found this quite entertaining in itself. Excellent writing and has an ending that will surprise.

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