The Sandcastle (Vintage Classics Murdoch Series)
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  • Published: 3 September 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784875176
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $22.99

The Sandcastle (Vintage Classics Murdoch Series)

Formats & editions
Paperback
3 Sep 2019
Paperback
1 Apr 2003
EBook
1 Sep 2010
Audiobook
2 Apr 2020
Paperback
30 Mar 1978
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Iris Murdoch's tragic, comic tale of love and lust – now republished as part of the Vintage Classics Murdoch Series – six gorgeous editions of her best, funniest and most subversive novels published to mark her centenary.

'It's all dry sand running through the fingers.'

When Bill Mor falls in love with Rain Carter he discovers a new way of being and a new joy in the world and his surroundings. To be with Rain he must abandon his prosaic life as a schoolmaster, his domineering wife Nan and his troubled teenaged children. He must draw on the powers of selfishness, hatred and anger in order to make the final break. But what love could survive all that violence?

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BIDISHA

VINTAGE CLASSICS MURDOCH: Funny, subversive, fearless and fiercely intelligent, Iris Murdoch was one of the great writers of the twentieth century. To celebrate her centenary Vintage Classics presents special editions of her greatest and most timeless novels.
  • Published: 3 September 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784875176
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $22.99
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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 made her writing debut in 1954 with Under the Net. Her twenty-six novels include the Booker prize-winning The Sea, The Sea (1978), the James Tait Black Memorial prize-winning The Black Prince (1973) and the Whitbread prize-winning The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974). Her philosophy includes Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953) and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992); other philosophical writings, including 'The Sovereignty of Good' (1970), are collected in Existentialists and Mystics (1997).

portrait photo of Iris Murdoch

Also by Iris Murdoch

The Sea, The Sea & A Severed Head
Living on Paper
The Black Prince (Vintage Classics Murdoch Series)
The Bell (Vintage Classics Murdoch Series)
An Accidental Man
A Word Child
The Time Of The Angels
See all

Praise for The Sandcastle (Vintage Classics Murdoch Series)

Her characters are described with loving exactitude and in such depth that their struggles to define what it means to live a good life take on dramatic force.

New York Times

Iris Murdoch is incapable of writing without fascinating and beautiful colour

The Times

She believes in everything: true love, veridical visions, magic, monsters, pagan spirits. Her world is ignited by belief

Martin Amis

How bloody good her novels are – how intelligent, how lucent, how divinely crazy. They’re fun – I’d forgotten that.

Sarah Waters, Guardian

One of her most haunting works... She is spectacularly enigmatic

Philippa Gregory

An absolutely scintillating, slightly bizarre, page-turner

Val Hennessy, Daily Mail