Murdoch Iris. The Black Prince

A story about being in love, "The Black Prince" is also a remarkable intellectual thriller with a superbly involved plot, and a meditation on the nature of art and love and the deity who rules over both.
Bradley Pearson, narrator and hero, is an elderly writer with a "block". Encompassed by predatory friends and relations - his ex-wife, her delinquent brother and a younger, deplorably successful writer, Arnold Baffin, together with Baffin's restless wife and youthful daughter - Bradley attempts escape. His failure and its aftermath lead to a violent climax; and to a coda which casts a shifting perspective on all that has gone before.