The Magus
John Fowles
 The story is written from the perspective of young Oxford graduate and aspiring poet Nicholas Urfe, who takes up with Alison Kelly, an Australian girl he meets at a party in London. To get away from an increasingly serious relationship with her, Nicholas accepts a post teaching English at the Lord Byron School in the Greek island of Phraxos. Bored, depressed, disillusioned, and overwhelmed by the Mediterranean island, Nicholas struggles with loneliness and contemplates suicide. Finding himself habitually walking the isle, he stumbles upon the estate, and soon the person of, wealthy Greek recluse Maurice Conchis, who may or may not have collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. Nicholas is gradually drawn into Conchis' psychological games, his paradoxical views on life, his mysterious persona, and his eccentric masques. At first, these various aspects of what the novel terms the "godgame" seem to Nicholas to be a joke but, as they grow more elaborate and intense, Nicholas's ability to determine what is real and what is artifice vanishes. Against his will and knowledge, he becomes a performer in the godgame and realizes that the reenactments of the Nazi occupation, the absurd playlets after de Sade, and the obscene parodies of Greek myths are not about Conchis' life, but his own.