The Philosophers Pupil by Iris Murdoch.  1983 Viking, unstated printing, 576 pages. Murdoch was a British philosopher and novelist and subject of a 2001 film starring Judi Dench. Her work dealt with moral themes and often employed a dark comedy. Joyce Carol Oates reviews The Philosopher's Pupil in the New York Times, "Where Miss Murdoch's celebrated early novels were brisk, polished, sardonic and highly original, rather like Restoration comedies in prose fiction form, her recent novels - from approximately ''A Fairly Honourable Defeat' onward - are far more whimsically structured, freer, chattier, by turns funnier and more ponderous. The early novels seem quintessentially English, the later self-consciously ''Russian.''"

Condition: Jacket in good condition, tear on front cover, book in good condition, stain on bottom of textblock.

"A few minutes before his brainstorm, or whatever it was, took place, George McCaffrey was having a quarrel with his wife."