Books like A fairly honourable defeat by Iris Murdoch

William Golding’s 1954 classic follows a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island, whose attempts to self-govern unravel into a stark exploration of leadership, morality, and the human capacity for both cooperation and violence.

1818 novel by Mary Shelley about young scientist Victor Frankenstein who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox experiment.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece examines the glittering yet hollow glamour of the Roaring Twenties as the enigmatic Jay Gatsby pursues love, wealth, and identity across the social divide.

Set in north England, Jane Eyre follows an orphaned governess who faces abuse, hardship, and ultimately a complicated love with her employer, Edward Rochester, while contemplating marriage to her austere cousin St. John Rivers.

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens’s 1837-39 social novel, follows an orphan raised in a workhouse who flees to London, joins a gang of pickpockets, and uncovers family secrets while exposing child labour and exploitation.

In 1935 England, a young woman’s allegation of a crime sets off a chain of events that devastates families, alters lives during the Second World War, and echoes into a later life of remorse and reflection.

On Beauty explores a New England family’s life as they confront love, identity, and cultural divides over three decades, weaving personal struggles with broader conversations about race and belonging.

Thomas Hardy follows former hunchback Michael Henchard, a merchant turned town mayor, as his pride, regret, and past sins collide in the close‑knit community of Casterbridge.

180 p. ; 21 cm.1010L Lexile

J.G. Ballard’s 1973 novel *Crash* explores the twisted allure of car accidents, delving into themes of violence, obsession, and the intersection of technology and sexuality.

In 1975 Istanbul, Kemal falls for shopgirl Fusun, breaking an impending engagement and setting off a romance that spans wealthy boulevards and humble backstreets, while he compulsively collects objects that turn into a personal museum.

A glamorous model vanishes during a Hawaii swimsuit shoot, prompting her parents and former cop turned reporter Ben Hawkins to race against time and corrupt police to uncover a killer who blurs beauty and murder in paradise.

A diverse community gathers outside Imber Abbey, where an ancient bell symbolizes religion and mystery, drawing questions of faith, love, and forgiveness into the lives of its members.

An unofficial rose follows nine intertwined characters, each seeking love while navigating affection, lust, and disillusion, revealing how their actions constantly shape one another’s destinies.

In 1950s Dublin, Yvonne, a spirited young woman drifting toward adulthood, wrestles with family expectations, a courtship with a Jewish suitor, and her own desire for independence.

Dame Iris Murdoch who has written several works of philosophy as well as twenty-four distinguished novels, now crowns her philosophic quest with a book that asks many questions and reflects on the essential aspects of the great subject: moral philosophy. Among her concerns are the roles literature, politics, art, and science play in the search for morality in a world that avoids the issue. What is morality, after all, Murdoch asks. Is it important? Is it true? Can it be taught in schools? Is it the very basis of our existence, or is it just one of many peripheral matters? A main theme of this profound work concerns religion and its relation to morals, to moral philosophy, and to the great metaphysical systems which have supported it in the past. These are questions that concern us all, as we are driven to reflect upon the relation between religion and morals and upon the various conceptions of what religion is. Iris Murdoch believes it is time for a dialogue between moral philosophy and a demythologizing theology. She casts fresh light on our great western metaphysicians, Plato and Kant. She writes that philosophy is now in danger of being fragmented into psychology, sociology, anthropology, and other peripheral disciplines. Some universities are closing their philosophy departments. Moral philosophy (ethics), if considered at all, tends to be segregated as a small, special subject. Technology, so beneficial in innumerable ways, displays to us a vast, colorful world of facts within which "moral value" may appear as a little particular item. In her lucid and tightly reasoned "reflections," Dame Iris Murdoch constructs a warning that the survival of philosophy with its persistent ever-new attempts to seek "foundations" is more than ever essential, when the very question of "human being" is at stake. A grand work by one of the most distinguished thinkers of our time.

Julian Barnes reexamines a three‑way relationship, letting Gillian, Stuart and Oliver speak directly to the reader, revealing the hidden betrayals and contradictions of modern love.