A motley assortment of characters seek peace and salvation in this early masterpiece by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, The Sea
A lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home of an order of sequestered nuns. A new bell is being installed when suddenly the old bell, a legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered. And then things begin to change. Meanwhile the wise old Abbess watches and prays and exercises discreet authority. And everyone, or almost everyone, hopes to be saved, whatever that may mean. Originally published in 1958, this funny, sad, and moving novel is about religion, sex, and the fight between good and evil.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Priase for Iris Murdoch and The Bell:
"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
"Funny, sad, and moving . . . The Bell is a novel about people who have ideas, people who think, people whose thoughts change their lives just as much as their impulses or their feelings do." —A. S. Byatt
"Like the best of Murdoch's novels, The Bell is about love and freedom, the interplay between the two and the destructive force of love-gone-wrong . . . her dialogues exist on a bright, self-aware plane . . . she's writing about the only things that matter—love, goodness, and how to be happy without hurting others." —The Independent
"In my late teens, A Severed Head and The Bell opened my eyes to another world. I took them as a rather elegant form of social realism, and I loved the new world they opened up to me." —Mary Beard, Times Literary Supplement
"Wonderfully lively and poignant at the same time, tender with a sprightly social commentary." —The Guardian
"A new level of sophistication for Murdoch . . . effortless shifting between the grim and the humorous." —Richard Nicholls, The New York Times
Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) was born in Dublin and brought up in London. She studied philosophy at Cambridge and was a philosophy fellow at St. Anne's College for 20 years. She published her first novel in 1954 and was instantly recognized as a major talent. She went on to publish more than 26 novels, as well as works of philosophy, plays, and poetry.
View titles by Iris Murdoch
A motley assortment of characters seek peace and salvation in this early masterpiece by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, The Sea
A lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home of an order of sequestered nuns. A new bell is being installed when suddenly the old bell, a legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered. And then things begin to change. Meanwhile the wise old Abbess watches and prays and exercises discreet authority. And everyone, or almost everyone, hopes to be saved, whatever that may mean. Originally published in 1958, this funny, sad, and moving novel is about religion, sex, and the fight between good and evil.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Praise
Priase for Iris Murdoch and The Bell:
"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
"Funny, sad, and moving . . . The Bell is a novel about people who have ideas, people who think, people whose thoughts change their lives just as much as their impulses or their feelings do." —A. S. Byatt
"Like the best of Murdoch's novels, The Bell is about love and freedom, the interplay between the two and the destructive force of love-gone-wrong . . . her dialogues exist on a bright, self-aware plane . . . she's writing about the only things that matter—love, goodness, and how to be happy without hurting others." —The Independent
"In my late teens, A Severed Head and The Bell opened my eyes to another world. I took them as a rather elegant form of social realism, and I loved the new world they opened up to me." —Mary Beard, Times Literary Supplement
"Wonderfully lively and poignant at the same time, tender with a sprightly social commentary." —The Guardian
"A new level of sophistication for Murdoch . . . effortless shifting between the grim and the humorous." —Richard Nicholls, The New York Times
Author
Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) was born in Dublin and brought up in London. She studied philosophy at Cambridge and was a philosophy fellow at St. Anne's College for 20 years. She published her first novel in 1954 and was instantly recognized as a major talent. She went on to publish more than 26 novels, as well as works of philosophy, plays, and poetry.
View titles by Iris Murdoch
