[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Existentialism
The original title of this novel was The God Player. It seems more fitting for a tale where a young English schoolteacher, Nicholas Urfe, goes to a Greek Island and meets a mysterious millionaire/piano teacher/war criminal/sorceror/collaborator/charlatan/etc., named Conchis, who teaches Urfe about himself by drawing him into a game where all is illusion. Of course, both Conchis and Fowles are playing mind games here and while their manipulations are entertaining at times, they are ultimately simply annoying. Moreover, unlike God, they seem to have little of value to convey to us and what they do have to say gets muddled in the obfuscations of the plot.
Nicholas Urfe is a young Oxford graduate in the early 50's, he is bored with teaching at a small English public school, he's tired of his Australian girlfriend Alison and decides to expand his horizons by taking up a job abroad. He applies for and is accepted as an English teacher at a school on the remote Greek island of Phraxos. Soon bored with the mundane surrounding and the regular trips to the mainland brothels, Nicholas becomes intrigued to hear of the reclusive millionaire Conchis that also lives on the island on a large estate separate from the main island village. Stories circulate amongst the villagers about Conchis and his involvement in the War as a German collaborator he is neither liked nor trusted by them. The more Nicholas finds out the more mysterious and contradictory the stories become. Inevitably Nicholas meets Conchis and thus begins a breathtaking, disturbing and emotionally draining adventure as Nicholas become drawn deeper and deeper into a seductive world of truth, lies and illusion.
Despite being over-simplistically billed as an "erotic thriller," this book is much much more. It is first a novel of self-discovery, one in which a truly alienated protagonist searching for meaning in the tea leaves takes us along.......
