New Releases by John Fowles

Perhaps the most beloved of John Fowles''s internationally bestselling works, The French Lieutenant''s Woman is a feat of seductive storytelling that effectively invents anew the Victorian novel. "Filled with enchanting mysteries and magically erotic possibilities" ( New York Times), the novel inspired the hugely successful 1981 film starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons and is today universally regarded as a modern classic.

En novellesamling af John Fowles (Den franske løjtnants kvinde). I Ibenholttårnet møder en ung abstrakt maler en gammel, anerkendt naturalistisk maler, der lever et tilbagetrukket liv i Bretagne. Mødet mellem de to kunstnere bliver en skelsættende begivenhed for den unge maler.

Det er en kold og blæsende martsdag i 1867. Yderst på molen i den lille by Lyme Regis på Englands sydkyst står en ung, sortklædt kvinde og stirrer ud over havet. Mødet med hende bliver skæbnesvangert og et vendepunkt i unge Charles Smithsons liv. Den franske løjtnants kvinde er en spændende og velfortalt kærlighedshistorie om to unge menneskers forsøg på at undslippe victoriatidens tyranniske hykleri. Men bogen er mere end det. John Fowles har villet skildre den victorianske tid, som den tager sig ud for vor tids mennesker. Tilsyneladende er bogen skrevet i datidens stil, men samtidig har den fået en fin ironisk drejning og hele tre forskellige slutninger.

Con la precisión y el dominio del lenguaje que caracterizan su narrativa, Fowles nos vuelve a sumergir en un mundo poblado de personajes propios de lo mejor de la mitología clásica. Un joven crítico de arte se replantea su convencional vida tras visitar a un pintor inglés retirado voluntariamente a la campiña francesa en compañía de dos misteriosas muchachas. Un ladrón filosófico despierta a un escritor para someterle a la peor de las torturas. La desaparición de un exitoso miembro del Parlamento pone en jaque a la policía londinense. Un grupo de amigos, cada uno con sus miserias, pasa unos días agridulces en un idílico paraje campestre. Estas cuatro historias, acompañadas de la traducción de un romance amoroso medieval francés, recogen los apasionantes temas de las novelas que convirtieron a este autor en uno de los referentes de la literatura inglesa del XX. Cinco relatos del autor de "La mujer del teniente francés" y "El coleccionista", que constituyen ejemplos perfectos del estilo riquísimo, deslumbrante y magistral de Fowles, y que están a la altura de sus mejores obras.

Autorovu románovou prvotinu inspirovala novinová zpráva o únosu dívky a jejím věznění v londýnském protileteckém krytu. Věznitel Frederick Clegg je psychopatický sexuální deviant, který si díky výhře v loterii může dovolit přestat pracovat a „starat se“ jen o svou zajatkyni. Takto realizuje svou touhu po vztahu s krásnou ženou a po manželství, které by mu otevřelo dveře do bohatšího a kultivovanějšího světa. Clegg je v podstatě mírný, nenásilný člověk, který ale nechápe, že plnohodnotný lidský vztah může vzniknout a rozvíjet se jen ze svobodného rozhodnutí. Miranda, studentka výtvarných umění a nadaná kreslířka, Clegga intelektuálně i osobnostně výrazně převyšuje. Je si toho vědoma a dokáže jím obratně manipulovat. Tragické vyústění své situace však odvrátit nedokáže.

In the spring of 1736 four men and one woman, all traveling under assumed names, are crossing the Devonshire countryside en route to a mysterious rendezvous. Before their journey ends, one of them will be hanged, one will vanish, and the others will face a murder trial. Out of the truths and lies that envelop these events, John Fowles has created a novel that is at once a tale of erotic obsession, an exploration of the conflict between reason and superstition, an astonishing act of literary legerdemain, and the story of the birth of a new faith.

"A superb novel...Evil has seldom been so sinister." --Time Hailed as the first modern psychological thriller, The Collector is the internationally bestselling novel that catapulted John Fowles into the front rank of contemporary novelists. This tale of obsessive love--the story of a lonely clerk who collects butterflies and of the beautiful young art student who is his ultimate quarry--remains unparalleled in its power to startle and mesmerize. "A bravura first novel...As a horror story, this book is a remarkable tour de force." --New Yorker

John Fowles wrote poetry throughout his lifetime, but more during the 1950s and 1960s than later. This book presents a selection of his poetic work opening with two sequences dating from the early part of his career, two of which draw on his time living in Greece and his interest in Greek mythology.

John Fowles gained international recognition in 1963 with his first published novel, The Collector, but his labor on what may be his greatest literary undertaking, his journals, commenced over a decade earlier. Fowles, whose works include The Maggot, The French Lieutenant''s Woman, and The Ebony Tower, is among the most inventive and influential English novelists of the twentieth century. The first volume begins in 1949 with Fowles'' final year at Oxford. It reveals his intellectual maturation, chronicling his experiences as a university lecturer in France and as a schoolteacher on the Greek island of Spetsai. Simultaneously candid and eloquent, Fowles'' journals also expose the deep connection between his personal and scholarly lives as Fowles struggled to win literary acclaim. From his affair with Elizabeth, the married woman who would become his first wife, to his passion for film, ornithology, travel, and book collecting, the journals present a portrait of a man eager to experience life. The second and final volume opens in 1966, as Fowles, already an international success, navigates his newfound fame and wealth. With absolute honesty, his journals map his inner turmoil over his growing celebrity and his hesitance to take on the role of a public figure. Fowles recounts his move from London to a secluded house on England''s Dorset coast, where discontented with society''s voracious materialism he led an increasingly isolated life. Great works in their own right, Fowles'' journals elucidate the private thoughts that gave rise to some of the greatest writing of our time.

In 1963, John Fowles won international recognition with The Collector, his first published novel. In the years following—with the publication of The Magus, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Ebony Tower, and his other critically acclaimed works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—Fowles took his place among the most innovative and important English novelists of our time. Now, with this first volume of his journals, which covers the years from 1949 to 1965, we see revealed not only the creative development of a great writer but also the deep connection between Fowles’s autobiographical experience and his literary inspiration. Commencing in Fowles’s final year at Oxford, the journals in this volume chronicle the years he spent as a university lecturer in France; his experiences teaching school on the Greek island of Spetsai (which would inspire The Magus) and his love affair there with the married woman who would later become his first wife; and his return to England and his ongoing struggle to achieve literary success. It is an account of a life lived in total engagement with the world; although Fowles the novelist takes center stage, we see as well Fowles the nascent poet and critic, ornithologist and gardener, passionate naturalist and traveler, cinephile and collector of old books. Soon after he fell in love with his first wife, Elizabeth, Fowles wrote in his journal, “She has asked me not to write about her in here. But I could not not write, loving her as I do. . . . What else I betrayed, I could not betray this diary.” It is that determined, unsparing honesty and forthrightness that imbues these journals with all the emotional power and narrative complexity of his novels. They are a revelation of both the man and the artist.

This firsthand account of the years before Fowles achieved recognition reads with all the emotional power and narrative complexity of his novels, providing invaluable insight into the relationship between Fowles'' life and his work.

Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who accepts a teaching position on a remote Greek island, befriends a local millionaire; but the friendship soon evolves into a deadly game and Nicholas finds that he must fight not only for his sanity but for his very survival.

Two years after The Collector had brought him international recognition and a year before he published The Magus, John Fowles set out his ideas on life in The Aristos. The chief inspiration behind them was the fifth century BC philosopher Heraclitus. In the world he posited of constant and chaotic flux the supreme good was the Aristos, ''of a person or thing, the best or most excellent its kind'',''What I was really trying to define was an ideal of human freedom (the Aristos) in an unfree world,'' wrote Fowles in 1965. He called a materialistic and over-conforming culture to reckoning with his views on a myriad of subjects -pleasure and pain, beauty and u liness, Christianit ,humanism, existentialism, socialism.

"Wormholes" presents, for the first time, a representative gathering of Fowles''s fugitive and intensely personal nonfiction writings: essays, literary criticism, commentaries, autobiographical statements, memoirs, and musings.