Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) was one of the most important British novelists of the 20th century, a philosopher and moral thinker whose work strongly marked European literature. Born in Dublin, raised in London, she studied classical philology and philosophy at Oxford and worked in the British Foreign Office before becoming a university professor of philosophy. Her thought, based on Platonism and the ethical research of the concept of good, deeply permeated her literature.

She achieved her literary breakthrough with the novel Under the Net (1954), followed by a series of over twenty novels characterized by psychological complexity, ethical dilemmas and subtle humor. Her most famous works are The Bell, A Severed Head, The Italian Girl, The Black Prince, The Sea, the Sea (which won the Booker Prize in 1978), The Time of the Angels, The Good Apprentice and The Sandcastle. In addition to novels, she wrote philosophical essays, studies, plays and criticism, leaving a rich theoretical contribution to the debate on ethics, art and morality.

The following novels of hers are available in Croatian and Serbian translation: Odrubljena glava (A Severed Head), Talijanska djevka / Italijanska devojka (The Italian Girl), Zvonik / Zvono (The Bell), More, more (The Sea, the Sea), Crni princ (The Black Prince), Doba anđela / Vrijem anđela (The Time of the Angels), Kula od peska / Duroc od peska (The Sandcastle) and The Good Apprentice.

Her biobibliographic profile remains a unique blend of philosophical seriousness and novelistic imagination, which is why Murdoch is still read today as one of the most profound and influential literary authors of modern British prose.