Under the Net

Published in 1954, Under the Net is Iris Murdoch’s first novel, a witty, philosophical and wonderfully unconventional portrait of post-war London. Its narrator, Jake Donaghue, is an aspiring writer and translator whose precarious existence is disrupted when he and his companion Finn are unexpectedly evicted from their lodgings. What follows is a lively series of encounters, romantic complications and improbable adventures involving old friends, former lovers, philosophers and film stars. From the streets of London to the cafés of Paris, Jake moves through a world in which almost nothing goes according to plan.

Beneath its comic, picaresque surface, the novel explores the difficulties of love, the limits of language and the impossibility of ever fully understanding another person. Murdoch draws upon her philosophical training to question the human desire to impose order and meaning upon an unpredictable world, while keeping her characters vividly alive and frequently absurd. Already displaying the intellectual curiosity and moral complexity that would define her later fiction, Under the Net remains one of the most distinctive comic novels of twentieth-century British literature.

From the book

“When caught unawares I usually tell the truth, and what's duller than that?”

— Iris Murdoch, Under the Net

On Under the Net

“Miss Iris Murdoch's first novel, Under the Net, reveals a brilliant talent.”

— The Times Literary Supplement