Mantissa

In Mantissa (1982), a novelist awakes in the hospital with amnesia — and comes to believe that a beautiful female doctor is, in fact, his muse.

In Mantissa (1982), a novelist awakes in the hospital with amnesia — and comes to believe that a beautiful female doctor is, in fact, his muse.

Library Journal

Fowles launched his career with The Collector, which was welcomed with great critical enthusiasm, including that of LJ's reviewer, who found it "a distinguished first novel" (LJ 8/63). Mantissa, on the other hand, was a departure from the author's more popular material and received only a marginal response (LJ 9/1/82).

John Fowles (1926-2005) was educated at Oxford and subsequently lectured in English at universities in Greece and the UK. The success of his first novel, The Collector, published in 1963, allowed him to devote all his time to writing. His books include the internationally acclaimed and bestselling novels The Magus, The French Lieutenant's Woman, and Daniel Martin. Fowles spent the last decades of his life on the southern coast of England in the small harbor town of Lyme Regis.