Description

At Villa Bourani, the host is charming and the stories are irresistible, but nothing is offered without a price.

WITH AN AFTERWORD FROM THE AUTHOR
Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman adrift after Oxford and a failed love affair, takes a teaching post on the Greek island of Phraxos. What begins as escape soon becomes a far more unsettling encounter.
At Bourani, a villa on the island, Nicholas meets Maurice Conchis, a cultivated and enigmatic recluse. Through stories, performances, seductions and staged mysteries, Conchis draws him into a psychological ordeal in which reality and illusion are almost impossible to separate.
The island gives Nicholas the drama he has been half-wishing for, then strips away the safety of being merely amused by it. In Fowles’s hands, this literary mystery becomes a disturbing study of performance, desire and the stories people tell in order to avoid themselves.

‘A major work of mounting tensions in which the human mind is the guinea-pig… Mr Fowles has taken a big swing at a difficult subject and his hits are on the bull’s eye’ Sunday Times

Publisher Review

Suspend disbelief and enjoy a master storyteller -- Christie Hickman * Sunday Express * One of those that's best read as a teenager, but once read you'll never forget it -- Katy Guest * Independent * A splendidly sustained piece of mystification * Financial Times * A deliciously toothsome celebration of wanton story-telling * Sunday Times * A major work of mounting tensions in which the human mind is the guinea-pig... Mr Fowles has taken a big swing at a difficult subject and his hits are on the bull's eye * Sunday Telegraph *