Winner of Booker Prize for Fiction 1978.

"Dazzlingly entertaining and inventive" The Times "One of the most ambitious tours de force in many years... There are pages one races through to see what happens. She is a virtuoso at description" Daily Mail "She was a brilliantly clever woman" -- Dame Judi Dench "There is no doubt in my mind that Iris Murdoch is one of the most important novelists now writing in English...The power of her imaginative vision, her intelligence and her awareness and revelation of human truth are quite remarkable" The Times "A fabulous novel...funny and poignant and is arguably Murdoch's finest hour" -- Gary Kemp Daily Express