Under the Net cover art

Under the Net

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Under the Net

By: Iris Murdoch
Narrated by: Samuel West
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Vintage Classics Murdoch: Funny, subversive, fearless and fiercely intelligent, Iris Murdoch was one of the great writers of the 20th century. To celebrate her centenary, Vintage Classics presents special editions of her greatest and most timeless novels.

‘This is real life, Jake,’ she said. ‘You’d better wake up.’

Jake is clever, lazy and scraping by in London as a hack translator. Jake loves Anna. Anna is an elusive and lovely singer. Anna loves Hugo. Hugo is a fireworks manufacturer turned movie producer and majestic philosopher. Hugo loves Sadie. Sadie is a glossy and dazzling film starlet. Of course, Sadie loves Jake. Then there's Marvellous Mister Mars, the famous hound, who might or might not be Jake's ticket up and out of this mess.

©1954 Iris Murdoch (P)2011 Penguin Audio Classics Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Good Apprentice cover art
Weirdo cover art
Next Season cover art
The Rise cover art
Went to London, Took the Dog cover art
An Imaginative Experience cover art
The Magic Mountain cover art
A Closed Eye cover art
Herzog cover art
The Travelling Grave and Other Stories cover art
The Keys to the Street cover art
The Crime at Black Dudley cover art
The Magus cover art
Talking to Strange Men cover art
All stars
Most relevant
Struggled to read this book for book club but Samuel West brought it life. would not recommend

Unsure what this story was for

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I would happily listen to more Murdoch - and this is one of her best, least typical novels, full of charm and thought and easy invention, lucidly read with intelligence and just the right amount of charm.

More Murdoch

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Beautifully read and oh! What a perfectly observed and described and felt story!!! Extraordinary and deeply touching

Marvellous!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Under the Net, Iris Murdoch's entertaining first novel,presents a difficult task for any narrator . The story is told in the first person by a complex contradictory character Jake Donaghue -likeable but flawed, perceptive but often obtuse - and the narrative ranges from knockabout comedy to philosophical discussion.All these challenges are successfully met by Samuel West in this excellent reading. He judges the tone of each episode with great discernment and besides giving a convincing voice to the principal character West also succeeds in bringing to life all the characters Jake encounters. His intelligent interpretation will greatly add to the understanding and enjoyment of most readers -as with Timothy West's reading of Trollope, such an excellent performance gives listening to the audio book a distinct advantage over reading for oneself.
I hope that Samuel West will read more novels by Iris Murdoch.

Over the net

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A bit to much gazing at ones own navel for me. Not the best book I have ever read.

A book of it's time.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews