November Book of the Month: The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch | The Booker Prize Podcast, Episode 21

Iris Murdoch was a prolific writer, completing 26 novels and several philosophy books in her lifetime. She still holds the record for most Booker Prize shortlistings (a joint record with Margaret Atwood) and the Booker Prize trophy has recently been renamed the 'Iris' in her honour. This month, we've picked The Black Prince, which was shortlisted for the Booker in 1973, as our Book of the Month. It's a part-thriller, part-love story that follows Bradley Pearson - an elderly writer with a ‘block’. Adding and contributing to his torment are a host of predatory friends and relations: his melancholic sister, his ex-wife and her delinquent brother, and a younger, deplorably successful writer, Arnold Baffin.
In this episode Jo and James share:
Their thoughts on Iris Murdoch's novels
Why Murdoch was an exceptionally funny writer, as well as a gifted one
A brief biography of Murdoch
A summary of The Black Prince
What they thought about The Black Prince
Who should read The Black Prince
Reading list:
The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch: thebookerprize...
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch: thebookerprize...
Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch
The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks
A full transcript of the episode is available at our website: thebookerprize...
---
The Booker Prizes on TikTok: tiktok.com/@thebookerprizes
The Booker Prizes on Twitter: TheBookerPrizes
The Booker Prizes on Facebook: TheBookerPrizes
The Booker Prizes on Instagram: thebookerprizes
The Booker Prize is the leading literary award in the English speaking world, and has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over five decades. Each year, the prize is awarded to what is, in the opinion of the judges, the best novel of the year written in English and published in the UK and Ireland.
Previous winners include The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, The Promise by Damon Galgut, Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, The Bone People by Keri Hulme and many more.
#BookerPrize

[@samuelalexander1014]

Finished this book yesterday. It's possibly my favourite book ever. It's meta-textual structure and arguing about love as a force of chaos is brilliant. So full of character, personality and absurdist humour.