Mosley, Nicholas

(British, 1923– )

Mosley's complex novels are serious and morally questioning, sometimes told in narrative fragments; their subjects are politics, science, and religion. This daunting combination is rendered palatable, however, by the relationships and human emotions with which his books also deal. The change from the realism of his early work to a more experimental style was signalled by Accident (1965); narrated by a philosophy don in an elliptical fashion, it concerns a triangular affair and was made into a film by Joseph Losey. Mosley's major novel is Hopeful Monsters (1990, Whitbread award), part of a project attempting to deal with the history of twentieth-century politics and experience. Spanning the period from 1919 to 1939, with a post-war epilogue, this is cast in the form of exchanges between a German-Jewish woman and a British scientist, ending with a moving reconciliation in old age. Children of Darkness and Light (1996) is a thriller with spiritual and political elements, featuring a previously cynical journalist investigating strange events involving children in Cumbria and war-ravaged Bosnia.

Iris Murdoch, William Golding    JS