 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Iris Murdoch |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Victor Ross[1] |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
Publication date | 1954 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 286pp |
Under the Net is a 1954 novel by Iris Murdoch. It was Murdoch's first published novel. Set in London, it is the story of a struggling young writer, Jake Donaghue. Its mixture of the philosophical and the picaresque has made it one of Murdoch's most popular novels.
It is dedicated to Raymond Queneau. When Jake leaves Madge's flat in Chapter 1, two of the books he mentions taking are Murphy by Samuel Beckett, and Pierrot mon ami by Queneau, both of which are echoed in this story. The epigraph, from John Dryden's Secular Masque, refers to the way in which the main character is driven from place to place by his misunderstandings.
In 2005, the novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels since 1923.[2] The editors of Modern Library named the work as one of the greatest English-language novels of the twentieth century.[3]
- ^ Fletcher, John; Cheryl Browning Bove (1994). Iris Murdoch: a descriptive primary and annotated secondary bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing. p. 127. ISBN 0824089103.
- ^ The Complete List | TIME Magazine – ALL-TIME 100 Novels
- ^ The Modern Library | 100 Best | Novels