The Black Prince (iris Murdoch)
by I
About This Novel
This is the mid-term masterpiece of Iris Murdoch, the most speculative winner in the history of the Booker Prize. It is another masterpiece that those who like "The Sea, The Sea" must not miss. A delay triggered a suicide and murder, a series of coincidences triggered a "Lolita"-style romance between young and old, and a "celebration of love" ended with an unjust case. Philosophy and art are highly integrated, both philosophical and dramatic, and use an exquisite meta-fictional structure to explain literature, freedom, love, marriage, sex, morality and destiny. The protagonist, Bradley, a writer in his late sixties, wants to escape the city and live in the countryside. Just before departure, his ex-wife's brother arrives unexpectedly. From this moment on, he is fatally trapped in endless nightmares: harassment by his ex-wife; insanity of his sister who was abandoned by her husband; his old friend's wife has a secret love for him; and the most hopeless thing, which is also the core of the story, is that he had an unfaithful love affair with his old friend's daughter, and eventually died unjustly in prison. In this novel, which is highly integrated with philosophy and art, the postmodernist experimental technique with the self-deconstruction of the text as its prominent feature is worth studying and pondering. While constructing his own narrative world, the author deconstructs this world through self-explanation or commentary, making up fictions while exposing them, subverting the tradition of authors hiding behind the fictional world in novel creation. This book won the James Tate Brack Memorial Award.
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