Henry And Cato: xx (Vintage classics) - Softcover

Murdoch, Iris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 009942908X ISBN 13: 9780099429081

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2002

Synopsis

Henry and Cato is the story of two prodigal sons. Henry returns from a self-imposed exile in America to an unforeseen inheritance of wealth and land in England. He is also returning to his mother. His friend Cato is struggling with two ambiguous intermingled passions, one for a God who may or may not exist, the other for a petty criminal who may or may not be capable of salvation. Cato's father and his sister Colette wait anxiously to welcome Cato back to sanity after his dubious escapades. Henry meanwhile confronts his mother, the unappeased furies of childish resentment, and various possibilities of revenge. Henry's cool mother watches, Cato's impetuous sister intervenes. Can love here become a saving force, or is it condemned to be possessive and demonic? Blackmail and violence take a hand, and both Henry and Cato return home at last.

About this title

Review:

'...behind her books one feels a power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist’ -- Sunday Times

‘Miss Murdoch is blessedly clever without any of the aridity which, for some reason, that word is supposed to imply’ -- Philip Toynbee

About the Author:

Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919. She read Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, and after working in the Treasury and abroad, was awarded a research studentship in Philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1948 she returned to Oxford as fellow and tutor at St Anne’s College and later taught at the Royal College of Art. Until her death in 1999, she lived in Oxford with her husband, the academic and critic, John Bayley. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 and in the 1997 PEN Awards received the Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature.

Iris Murdoch made her writing debut in 1954 with Under the Net. Her twenty-six novels include the Booker prize-winning The Sea, The Sea (1978), the James Tait Black Memorial prize-winning The Black Prince (1973) and the Whitbread prize-winning The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974). Her philosophy includes Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953) and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992); other philosophical writings, including 'The Sovereignty of Good' (1970), are collected in Existentialists and Mystics (1997).

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 009942908X
• ISBN 13: 9780099429081
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368