An amnesiac novelist converses with his muse in this "clever and wickedly funny" classic novel by the author of The Collector ( Atlantic Monthly ). "A literary delight." — Playboy Literature, love, and lust collide as a writer meets his muse—and his match—in John Fowles's most slyly dazzling work of fiction. The writer: Miles Green, a novelist, who awakens in a hospital room, suffering from amnesia. The muse: Erato, who appears alternately as a doctor, a punk, a geisha, a nymph; by turns tender, critical, admiring, and bossy; engaging Miles in a wickedly entertaining and teasingly enigmatic dialogue of words and flesh. "A jeu d'esprit with a vengeance. . . . Sex and art stare each other down and the contest is a standoff. . . . Fowles raises tantalizing and entertaining questions." — Time "Splendid. . . . It is the best possible evidence of the relationship between John Fowles and his own muse that he can spin a web like this which is so light, and yet so strong." — Washington Post Book World Originally published in 1982.