Fairy Tales and the Fiction of Iris Murdoch, Margaret Drabble, and A. S. Byatt

The Grimm brothers’ fairy tales have long fascinated readers with their violence and frank sexuality. Three of Britain’s most important novelists, Iris Murdoch, Margaret Drabble, and A. S. Byatt, have shared this fascination. Their fiction explores the darker themes of fairy tales – bestiality, cannibalism, and incest – and finds within them reasons to be optimistic about our fractured modern world.