A Fairly Honourable Defeat
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: N/A
Pages: Good
What happens when a brilliant, manipulative mind decides to test the strength of human love and moral conviction? Published in 1970, Iris Murdoch's A Fairly Honourable Defeat chronicles the calculated unravelling of relationships within a comfortable circle of London intellectuals, when the charismatic and sinister Julius King returns from America and sets a cruel social experiment in motion. The novel centres on Rupert and Hilda, a couple who believe their marriage and their liberal values to be unassailable — a confidence that Julius finds irresistible to dismantle. With surgical precision, Murdoch constructs a narrative of deception, self-delusion, and the fragile architecture of human goodness. A towering work in the Murdoch canon, A Fairly Honourable Defeat illustrates the author's signature preoccupation with morality, power, and the dangerous vanity of those who consider themselves enlightened. Drawing on her background in philosophy, Murdoch presents evil not as a melodramatic force but as something disturbingly mundane — patient, witty, and entirely plausible. Her prose is precise yet warmly ironic, investing even minor characters with psychological complexity and moral weight. This Heron Books Collectors' Edition is a distinguished rendering of a novel that continues to unsettle readers with its most unsettling question: is goodness ever truly strong enough to withstand a determined assault?
Author: Iris Murdoch
Format: Hardback
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: N/A
Pages: Good
What happens when a brilliant, manipulative mind decides to test the strength of human love and moral conviction? Published in 1970, Iris Murdoch's A Fairly Honourable Defeat chronicles the calculated unravelling of relationships within a comfortable circle of London intellectuals, when the charismatic and sinister Julius King returns from America and sets a cruel social experiment in motion. The novel centres on Rupert and Hilda, a couple who believe their marriage and their liberal values to be unassailable — a confidence that Julius finds irresistible to dismantle. With surgical precision, Murdoch constructs a narrative of deception, self-delusion, and the fragile architecture of human goodness. A towering work in the Murdoch canon, A Fairly Honourable Defeat illustrates the author's signature preoccupation with morality, power, and the dangerous vanity of those who consider themselves enlightened. Drawing on her background in philosophy, Murdoch presents evil not as a melodramatic force but as something disturbingly mundane — patient, witty, and entirely plausible. Her prose is precise yet warmly ironic, investing even minor characters with psychological complexity and moral weight. This Heron Books Collectors' Edition is a distinguished rendering of a novel that continues to unsettle readers with its most unsettling question: is goodness ever truly strong enough to withstand a determined assault?