Under the Net. Escape from the Wizard

The novel «Under the Net», Murdoch's debut in fiction, is one of her most famous works, which remains contemporary thanks to the image of the main character Jake Donaghue. The translator and prose writer Jake is clever, ironic, talented, but... lazy, and has the remarkable ability to simply drift through life, not so much because he cannot, but rather because he simply does not want to fight fate. He is completely indifferent to how to make a living — whether it be through cheap literary work, or the hard labor of a hospital orderly. The most he is willing to concern himself with is the search for an affordable apartment. However, an unexpected meeting with a young woman named Anna Quentin becomes fateful for Jake — his life begins to be entangled in a web of astonishing events, taking increasingly unexpected, almost surreal turns... Escape from the Wizard Misha Fox — an extraordinary man who has either imagined himself as a magician who enjoys playing with people’s fate, or who in reality possesses some mystical power over human souls. Those around him cannot escape his influence and obediently follow all his manipulations, for as soon as Fox touches one of the strings, the entire puppet theater of living marionettes comes to life. But is everything really as it seems? Perhaps Misha Fox is merely a convenient excuse not to take control of one's own life, to give up, and to go with the flow? Perhaps the people enchanted by him invented their own «wizard»?