Nuns and Soldiers - (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Iris Murdoch (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Set in London and in the South of France, this brilliantly structured novel centers on two women: Gertrude Openshaw, bereft from the recent death of her husband, yet awakening to passion; and Anne Cavidge, who has returned in doubt from many years in a nunnery, only to encounter her personal Christ. A fascinating array of men and women hover in urgent orbit around them: the "Count," a lonely Pole obsessively reliving his émigré father's patriotic anguish; Tim Reede, a seedy yet appealing artist, and Daisy, his mistress; the manipulative Mrs. Mount; and many other magically drawn characters moving between desire and obligation, guilt and joy. This edition of Nuns and Soldiers includes a new introduction by renowned religious historian Karen Armstrong.

Review Quotes

"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. The scope of her vision makes you feel, when you are close to her fiction, that you have glimpsed the sublime." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"As with Nuns and Soldiers, so with the condiiton of love: you want to know how it will turn out, but you certainly don't want it to end." --Martin Amis, The Observer

"Few writers have been able to describe the cataclysmic and humorous experience of love as well as Murdoch." --Karen Armstrong

"Murdoch at her best . . . the novel is, like life, full of surprises, and conveys a marvelous sense of underlying order and swarming randomnes together." --A.S. Byatt, New Statesman

"Dazzling . . . Engrossing . . . Like Proust and Henry James, Murdoch transports the reader to the stylish grace of other times and ways, but cleverly never lets us forget the reality just outside the door . . . comical and pessimistic, intelligent, and eccentric . . . Iris Murdoch's novels are a bit like life: The destination is uncertain, but the journey is, after all, what matters." --Barbara Phillips, The Christian Science Monitor

About the Author

Dame Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) was one of the most acclaimed British writers of the twentieth century. Very prolific, she wrote twenty-six novels, four books of philosophy, five plays, a volume of poetry, a libretto, and numerous essays before developing Alzheimer's disease in the mid-1990s. Her novels have won many prizes: the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Black Prince, the Whitbread Literary Award for Fiction for The Sacred and Profane Love Machine, and the Booker Prize for The Sea, The Sea. She herself was also the recipient of many esteemed awards: Dame of the Order of the British Empire, the Royal Society of Literature's Companion of Literature award, and the National Arts Club's (New York) Medal of Honor for Literature. In 2008, she was named one of the Times' (London) 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

Karen Armstrong's books include The Battle for God, A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths; and In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis. A former Roman Catholic nun, she teaches at Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism and received the 1999 Muslim Public Affairs Council Media Award.