Mantissa

An amnesiac novelist converses with his muse in this “clever and wickedly funny” classic novel by the author of The Collector (Atlantic Monthly).

“A literary delight.” —Playboy

Literature, love, and lust collide as a writer meets his muse—and his match—in John Fowles’s most slyly dazzling work of fiction. The writer: Miles Green, a novelist, who awakens in a hospital room, suffering from amnesia. The muse: Erato, who appears alternately as a doctor, a punk, a geisha, a nymph; by turns tender, critical, admiring, and bossy; engaging Miles in a wickedly entertaining and teasingly enigmatic dialogue of words and flesh.

“A jeu d’esprit with a vengeance. . . . Sex and art stare each other down and the contest is a standoff. . . . Fowles raises tantalizing and entertaining questions.” —Time

“Splendid. . . . It is the best possible evidence of the relationship between John Fowles and his own muse that he can spin a web like this which is so light, and yet so strong.” —Washington Post Book World

Originally published in 1982.