In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess’s interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess’s list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, Will Carr investigates the postmodern delights of The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles, with writer and editor Charles Drazin.

Telling the story of the meeting between the gentleman Charles Smithson and the disgraced Sarah Woodruff, The French Lieutenant’s Woman defies the conventions of the Victorian novels to which it pays homage. Putatively a love story, the narrative leads to multiple conflicting endings. Of the novel, Anthony Burgess wrote, ‘A very modern mind is manipulating us as well as the characters.’

John Fowles was born in 1926 in Essex. After training to join the navy, he studied at New College, Oxford, where he became interested in writing. After university, he became a teacher, holding posts in Britain, France and Greece, the latter inspiring the setting of his novel The Magus. His first novel, The Collector, was published in 1963, and he went on to write six more novels, a book of essays, a collection of poetry and several more non-fiction works. He died in 2005.

Charles Drazin is the editor of two volumes of journals by John Fowles. He has written about a variety of subjects. His books on film include In Search of The Third Man and The Faber Book of French Cinema. He has written the histories The Man Who Outshone the Sun King, which tells the story of Louis XIV’s finance minister Nicolas Foucquet; and Mapping the Past, which follows a family of Irish Catholic surveyors who mapped vast swathes of the British Empire. His most recent book, Making Hollywood Happen (2022), tells the inside story a little-known company that in the past seventy years has overseen the production of hundreds of the most celebrated movies ever made. He is currently working on the Faber Book of British Cinema.

Books mentioned in this episode

By John Fowles:

• The Collector (1963)
• A Maggot (1985)
• Journals, Volumes One and Two (2003, 2006)

By others:

• Orlando by Virginia Woolf (1928)
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966)
• Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)

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In previous series of Ninety-Nine Novels, we learnt about authors including James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, Nadine Gordimer, Vladimir Nabokov and Christopher Isherwood, among others. These episodes are available at your favourite place to get podcasts.

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The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.

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