The Collector » (Reprint)

John Fowles (1926-2005) was educated at Oxford and subsequently lectured in English at universities in Greece and the UK. The success of his first novel, published in 1963, allowed him to devote all his time to writing. He spent the last decades of his life on the southern coast of England in the small harbor town of Lyme Regis.

Miranda, a beautiful young art student, is the object of obsession here. She becomes the ultimate prize for the psychopathic Frederick, the butterfly collector who has watched her for years. Then one day, chloroform in his pocket, he takes her to his cottage miles from no where. "What happens is both symbolic and all too real, beautiful and sickening at once... as resonant as a myth," wrote one reviewer in the National Review. Read as a psychological thriller, a tale of suspence, or an allegory of a dysfunctional society, The Collector is hauntingly beautiful in its examination of evil.

There is not a page in this first novel which does not prove that its author is a master storyteller.