The Italian Girl - by Iris Murdoch Paperback

About the Book

Edmund Narraway has returned to his childhood home for the first time in years to attend his mother's funeral. The visit rekindles feelings of affection and nostalgia, but also triggers a resurgence of the tensions that caused him to leave in the first place. As Edmund once again becomes entangled in his family's web of corrosive secrets, his homecoming tips a precariously balanced dynamic into sudden chaos, in this compelling story of reunion and coming apart.

Book Synopsis

A family struggles for redemption after a funeral brings dark secrets to the surface in this novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, The Sea.

For the first time in years, Edmund Narraway has returned to his childhood home--for the funeral of his mother. The visit rekindles feelings of affection and nostalgia--but also triggers a resurgence of the tensions that caused him to leave in the first place.

As Edmund once again becomes entangled in his family's web of corrosive secrets, his homecoming tips a precariously balanced dynamic into sudden chaos, in this compelling story of reunion and coming apart from Iris Murdoch, "one of the most significant novelists of her generation" (The Guardian).

Review Quotes

Praise for Iris Murdoch
"The power of her imaginative vision, her intelligence and her awareness and revelation of human truth are quite remarkable." --The Times (London) on The Sea, The Sea

"[Murdoch is] prodigiously inventive." --The New York Times

"One of the most significant novelists of her generation." --The Guardian

"Murdoch was the rare kind of great, buoyant, confident writer who could drive the whole machine. She was as in touch with animal instincts as intellectual ones." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times

About the Author

Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) is the author of twenty-six novels, including Under the Net, The Black Prince, and The Sea, The Sea, as well as several plays and a volume of poetry. Murdoch taught philosophy at Oxford before leaving to write fulltime, winning such literary awards as the Booker Prize and the PEN Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature.