
Fowles's fiction was never merely dry, intellectual sparring. He was a writer possessed of an expansive imagination, whose gifts as a storyteller meant that his dramas were played out beyond the conflicts of the inner self. His narrative genius led to three of his novels being filmed, two of them to critical acclaim. John Fowles, the British writer whose teasing, multilayered fiction explored the tensions between free will and the constraints of society, even as it played with traditional novelistic conventions and challenged readers to find their own interpretations of his work. The French Lieutenant’s Woman, appeared in 1969 and won several awards and was made into a well-received film (1981) starring Meryl Streep in the title role and was the most commercially successful. "Fowles's success in the marketplace derives from his great skill as a storyteller," wrote Ellen Pifer. For whatever reason - he always said it was because he was mistrusted by the British liter...