The magus : a revised version
(Book)

Includes reading group guide.

Originally published: Boston : Little, Brown, 1978.

Nicholas Urfe, a young Oxford graduate and aspiring poet, accepts a post teaching English at the Lord Byron School on the remote Greek island of Phraxos. After beginning his new post, he becomes bored, depressed, disillusioned, and overwhelmed by the Mediterranean island, struggling with loneliness and contemplating suicide. While habitually wandering around the island, he stumbles upon an estate and befriends its owner, an extremely wealthy Greek recluse named Maurice Conchis. Nicholas is gradually drawn into Conchis's psychological games, his paradoxical views on life, his mysterious persona, and his eccentric masques. At first, Nicholas takes the posturings, or 'godgames' of Conchis, to be a joke, but they soon grow more elaborate, intense, and dangerous. The friendship soon evolves into a deadly game in which reality and fantasy are deliberately maniputed and Nicholas finds he must fight not only for his sanity but for his very survival. --adapted from Wikipedia and the back cover.