Memento Mori

Description

Described by David Lodge as 'her first masterpiece', Memento Mori opens with a telephone call and the words 'Remember you must die'. Over several months, a circle of elderly men and women receive similar calls and everyone becomes a suspect. As the investigating police inspector muses: 'Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death, life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.' While immersed in the indignities of old age, dementia and death, this novel is both profoundly compassionate and entertaining. This is one of the 22 novels written by Muriel Spark in her lifetime. All are being published by Polygon in hardback Centenary Editions between November 2017 and September 2018.

Muriel Spark was born in Edinburgh in 1918. A poet, essayist, biographer and novelist, she won much international praise, including being twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Times placed her eighth in its list of the Fifty Greatest British Writers Since 1945. She died in Tuscany in 2006. Zoe Strachan was born in Kilmarnock in 1975. Her first novel, Negative Space, was published by Picador in 2002. Zoe teaches on the Creative Writing Programme at the University of Glasgow and is on the board of directors of the Glasgow Women's Library.

'As I entered my teens, I developed a taste for more arch, snappy writing and discovered the joys of Muriel Spark. Wisdom and wit - ideal for an impressionable youth finding his way in the world' -- Julian Clary * Daily Mail * 'a perfect example of humour providing purpose and drive' * BBC Culture * 'funny without ever once breaking the spell of the book' -- Richard Osman