Charles Arrowby, retired theater director and monster of egotism, moves to a coastal house and encounters his first love from forty years before. Iris Murdoch's 1978 novel won the Booker Prize, and it is her most sustained exploration of the self's capacity for delusion. Charles narrates his own story without understanding it; the reader sees what he cannot. The sea is indifferent; the magic that appears may be real or may be projection. Murdoch believed in goodness. This novel shows how hard goodness is to achieve.