About the author

Muriel Spark was born in Edinburgh in 1918. A poet, essayist, biographer and novelist, she won much international praise, receiving the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the US Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She was twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Public Image in 1968 and Loitering with Intent in 1981) and in 2010 she was shortlisted for the “Lost Man Booker Prize” of 1970. In 1993 she was made a Dame for services to literature. In 1998 she was awarded the Golden PEN Award for a “Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature”. She died in Tuscany in 2006.