Often acclaimed as Murdoch's best work The Sea, The Sea (1978), a Booker Prize-winning novel, tells the story of Charles Arrowby, a tyrannical director-playwright, who decides to retire after a forty-year-long career in the theatre. He moves to a home by the sea and plans to write his memoirs about an old love affair. Things do not go as he had thought, as he is visited by people from his past (some of them no longer alive) and he learns a lot more about himself than he thought he wanted to know.

The Black Prince (1973) is another of Murdoch's more reputed works. It is an experimental novel, and the story is told by Bradley Pearson, a self-conscious writer who is a perfectionist. He ends up in jail for a crime he did not commit.

Jean-Paul Sartre introduced Murdoch to the philosophy...