“Time in itself, absolutely, does not exist; it is always relative to some observer or some object. Without a clock I say 'I do not know the time' . Without matter time itself is unknowable. Time is a function of matter; and matter therefore is the clock that makes infinity real.”

English novelist

John Robert Fowles was an English novelist, active in the twentieth century, whose work is often placed between modernism and postmodernism. He is known for fiction shaped by philosophical concerns and by the influence of writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. His novels are associated with ideas of choice, freedom, and uncertainty, and with a style that looks back to modernist writing while also moving toward postmodern methods. He remains widely read for that blend of intellectual seriousness and narrative experimentation.