Muriel Spark

The Mandelbaum Gate is a novel written by Scottish author Muriel Spark published in 1965. The title refers to the Mandelbaum Gate in Jerusalem around which the novel is set. In 1965, it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize that year. In 2012, it was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. It was included …

The Bachelors is a novel written in 1960 by the Scottish author Muriel Spark, referred to by The New York Times as "the most gifted and innovative British novelist". It follows a group of British bachelors whose misogynistic world is shattered when they suddenly find themselves the target of blackmail and fraud.

The brevity of Muriel Spark’s novels is equaled only by their brilliance. These four novels, each a miniature masterpiece, illustrate her development over four decades. Despite the seriousness of their themes, all four are fantastic comedies of manners, bristling with wit. Spark’s most celebrated novel, The Prime of …

The Comforters is the first novel by Scottish author Muriel Spark. She drew on experiences as a recent convert to Catholicism and having suffered hallucinations due to using Dexedrine, an amphetamine then available over the counter for dieting. Although completed in late 1955, the book was not published until 1957. A …

Symposium is a novel by Scottish author Muriel Spark, published in 1990. It was regarded by John Mortimer writing in The Sunday Times as one of the best novels of that year.

The Abbess of Crewe is Muriel Spark's razor sharp, wickedly humorous and surreal satire of a real life political scandal - reimagined within the claustrophobic walls of a convent. A steely, Machiavellian nun, secret surveillance, corruption, cloak-and-dagger plotting, rivalries and a rigged election all send the …

Loitering With Intent is a novel by Scottish author Muriel Spark. Published in 1981 by Bodley Head it was short-listed for the Booker Prize that year. It contains many autobiographical references to Spark's early career and was reprinted in 2001 by New Directions, in the US, and in 2007 by Virago Press in the UK.

The Ballad of Peckham Rye is a novel written in 1960 by the Scottish author Muriel Spark. It tells the story of a devilish Scottish migrant, Dougal Douglas, who moves to Peckham in London and wreaks havoc amongst the lives of the inhabitants. The text draws upon the supernatural, as well as issues of Irish and …

The Finishing School is the last novel written by Scottish author Muriel Spark and published by Viking Press in 2004. It concerns 'College Sunrise', a mixed-sex finishing school in Ouchy on the banks of Lake Geneva near Lausanne in Switzerland.