Daniel Martin

"A masterpiece of symbolically charged realism . . . [by] the only writer in English who has the power, range, knowledge, and wisdom of a Tolstoy or James." —John Gardner, Saturday Review


The eponymous hero of John Fowles's largest and richest novel is an English playwright turned Hollywood screenwriter who has begun to question his own values. Summoned home to England to visit an ailing friend, Daniel Martin finds himself back in the company of people who once knew him well, forced to confront his buried past, and propelled toward a journey of self-discovery through which he ultimately creates for himself a more satisfying existence. A brilliantly imagined novel infused with a profound understanding of human nature, Daniel Martin is John Fowles at the height of his literary powers.


"We're never unaware that Mr. Fowles is up to something that is extremely important to him, and this alone is a source of considerable tension and excitement . . . an old-fashioned novel in the sense that one can enter and live in it." —Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

"Absorbing, intellectually challenging . . . A startlingly provocative novel . . . Like Henry James before him, Fowles has created rarified creatures free enough to take on the toughest question that life offers: How to live?"—Paul Gray, Time