Spark's Europe: Not to Disturb: The Takeover: The Only Problem

Description

From the grimly gothic Do Not Disturb to the razor-sharp dissection of manners The Takeover and the mordantly brilliant The Only Problem, in a panoramic sweep taking in the shores of the Italian lakes to the castles of Geneva, Muriel Spark casts her unflinching gaze over the continent and onto some of the odder specimens of human nature abounding there. By turns savage, witty and profound, Spark's Europe reaffirms Muriel Spark as one of the most important novelists of the twentieth century.

Muriel Spark, DBE, C.Litt., was born in Edinburgh in 1918 and educated in Scotland. A poet and novelist, she also wrote children's books, radio plays, the comedy Doctors of Philosophy and biographies of nineteenth-century literary figures, including Mary Shelley and Emily Bront.. Muriel Spark has garnered international praise and many awards, including the David Cohen Prize for Literature, the Ingersoll T.S. Eliot Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Boccaccio Prize for European Literature, the Gold Pen Award, the first Enlightenment Award and the Italia Prize for dramatic radio. She died in 2006.

Glittering, Sparkian ice -- ALI SMITH A wholly original presence in modern literature -- ANDREW MOTION Enchanting, devastating, genius -- HELEN DUNMORE There can be few novelists who command such a formidable technique * * Financial Times * * She shares with Barbara Pym and Iris Murdoch the magical ability to write about people from whom in life we would run a mile, but who are made fascinating by their author's perceptions * * Spectator * * Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards, decisive as a smashed glass is decisive -- JOHN UPDIKE * * New Yorker * * My admiration for Spark's contribution to world literature knows no bounds. She was peerless, sparkling, inventive and intelligent - the creme de la creme -- IAN RANKIN The care with which she uses words is matched by a gloriously carefree attitude. It's all part of her sanity, her breezy authorial self-confidence; and because of this I think that reading a blast of her prose every morning is a far more restorative way to start a day than a shot of espresso * * Daily Telegraph * * A profoundly serious comic writer whose wit advances, never undermines or diminishes, her ideas * * New York Times Book Review * * She has a receptive and wholly distinctive genius -- A N WILSON * * Spectator * * Spark is a natural, a paradigm of that rare sort of artist from whom work of the highest quality flows as elementally as current through a circuit * * New Yorker * *