Bøker av Muriel Spark

Romantic, heroic, comic and tragic, unconventional school mistress Jean Brodie has become an iconic figure in post-war fiction. Her glamour, unconventional ideas and manipulative charm hold dangerous sway over her girls at the Marcia Blaine Academy who become the Brodie 'set', introduced to a world of adult games that they will never forget.

A title written by the author of novels such as "Memento Mori" (1959), "The Ballad of Peckham Rye" (1960), "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (1961), "The Girls of Slender Means" (1963), and "Aiding and Abetting" (2000).

So speaks the narrator of Muriel Spark''s haunting tale, ''The Leaf-sweeper'', before going on to recount the disturbing and mercilessly witty story of a certain ''madman'' - Johnnie Geddes, hell-bent on outlawing Christmas - who meets the most terrifying of all apparitions: himself.

Driven mad by an office job, Lise flies south on holiday - in search of passionate adventure and sex. In this metaphysical shocker, infinity and eternity attend Lise's last terrible day in the unnamed southern city that is her final destination.

The first volume of the letters of Muriel Spark, one of the most fascinating and well-loved writers of the twentieth century - edited and published for the first time. In 1944 Muriel Spark was unknown as a writer except to a handful of close friends, returning to England after a disastrous marriage in Southern Rhodesia; by 1963 she was the internationally renowned author of seven critically acclaimed, bestselling novels including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Her letters - witty, affectionate, acid-tongued, mercurial - reveal the turbulence of her early career in postwar London, including her struggles to earn a living as a writer, her difficult relationships with Howard Sergeant and Derek Stanford, a terrifying breakdown, and her conversion to Catholicism. They also trace her development from tentative poet to acclaimed novelist, with glittering insights into the emergence of her unique literary voice, as well as her relationships with friends, lovers, writers and publishers. Selected from her extensive correspondence and insightfully edited and annotated, this is an essential read for anyone interested in Spark's writing and mid-century literature.

Muriel Spark's timeless and eternally modern novel of power and influence, brought to life for a new age of readers in a stunning dyslexia-friendly edition.

Spiritualist and extortionist Patrick Seton is coming up for trial. He¿s been accused of forgery, and suddenly West London¿s bachelors are all in a tizzy. Described by Evelyn Waugh as the `cleverest and most elegant of all Mrs Spark¿s clever and elegant books¿, The Bachelors is a biting comedy of English manners.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.

Caroline Rose has a problem. She hears voices and the incessant tapping of typewriter keys, and she seems to be a character in a novel . . . A comedy of errors, a crime novel, a book about books, Spark¿s debut remains as otherworldly and mischievous as it was when first published sixty years ago.The publishers acknowledge investment from Creative Scotland towards the publication of this book.Supported by the Muriel Spark Society.

A Good Comb, a small gift edition of Muriel Spark's brilliant asides, sayings, and aphorisms, is a book for sheer enjoyment. No writer offers such lively, pointed, puckish insights: "Neurotics are awfully quick to notice other people's mentalities." "It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles." "The sacrifice of pleasure is of course itself a pleasure." "It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist." "She wasn't a person to whom things happen." "You look for one thing and you find another." "It calms you down, a good comb."Her scope is great and her striking insights are precise and unforgettable. This book will entertain you? It will even help you live your life. Drink in the pleasures of this little volume along with the benefits of taking up such advice as "Never make excuses but if you must, never make more than one? It gives the appearance of insincerity." And "Beware of men bearing flowers."

The definitive short story collection from an unmistakable voice. Introduced by Janice Galloway

Now available as a stunning Canon'A work of glittering Sparkian ice, whose thinly frozen surface tempts you to jump up and down jovially above something deeper and darker' ALI SMITH

Travel the continent with this new collection of Muriel Spark's European novels as your guide - an often surprising, occasionally moving, and always unfailingly funny trip

'I am dazzled by The Bachelors. It is the cleverest and most elegant of all Spark's clever and elegant books' Evelyn WaughNow available in print and eBook as a gorgeous canon

With easy, sunny eeriness, Spark lights up the darkest things: blackmail, a drowning, nervous breakdowns, a ring of smugglers, a loathsome busybody, a diabolic bookseller, human evil.

First published in 1993, this book brings together Muriel Spark's writings on the Bronte sisters, including a selection of their letters and a selection of Emily Bronte's poems.

In late 1950s London, something uncanny besets a group of elderly friends: an insinuating voice on the telephone reminds each: Remember you must die. Their geriatric feathers are soon thoroughly ruffled, and many an old unsavory secret is dusted off.

First found contentedly chatting in their London clubs, the cozy bachelors (as any Spark reader might guess) are not set to stay cozy for long. Soon enough, the men are variously tormented - defrauded or stolen from, blackmailed or pressed to attend horrid séances - and then plunged into the nastiest of lawsuits.

When Barbara Vaughan's fianc joins an archaeological excursion to the Dead Sea Scrolls, she takes the opportunity to explore the Holy Land. It is 1961, and the nation of Israel is still in its infancy. For Barbara, a half-Jewish Catholic convert, this is a journey of faith, and she ignores warnings not to cross the Mandelbaum Gate from Israel into Jordan. An adventure of espionage and abduction, from pilgrimage to flight, The Mandelbaum Gate is one of Spark's most compelling novels, and won the James Tait Memorial Prize.

Robert wants nothing more than to become a serious art historian. But his hopes for an academic life are put on hold when he's driven from London to Venice to escape one lover and seek out another: the enigmatic Bulgarian refugee Lina Pancev. In Venice, Robert encounters a grand carnival of lust, lies, blackmail, cocktail parties and regicide. As he chases Lina, his heart's desire, the city itself provides a priceless education in love, art and beauty.

A winter's night; a luxurious mansion near Geneva; a lucrative scandal. The first to arrive is the secretary dressed in furs with a bundle of cash, then the Baron, and finally the Baroness. They lock themselves in the library with specific instructions not to be disturbed for any reason. Soon, shouts and screams emerge from the library; the Baron's lunatic brother starts madly howling in the attic; two of the secretary's friends are left waiting in a car; a reverend's services are needed for an impromptu wedding-and despite all that the servants obey their orders as they pass the time playing records, preparing dinner, and documenting false testimonies while a twisted murder plot unfolds upstairs.

Annabel Christopher is every inch the star: a glamorous actress with a devoted, handsome husband. To keep the paparazzi and her adoring public under her spell, her perfect image must be carefully cultivated, whatever the cost. Beneath the facade, though, her husband cannot bear her or their vapid existence. Envious of her success, he plots his revenge and stages a scandal even Annabel will find a challenge to recover from.

Spark's poems are witty, idiosyncratic and haunting, transforming the familiar into glittering moments of strangeness, revealing the dark - and light - music beneath the mundane.

Mrs Hawkins, a fat young war widow worked for a mad, near-bankrupt publisher in 1950s London. Looking back on shady literary doings and a deadly enemy, anonymous letters, blackmail and suicide, the thin and successful Mrs Hawkins recalls how she came through it all.

Annabel Christopher is a goddess to her adoring Italian public, her loving husband part of her perfect image. To keep the eager sycophants, ruthless paparazzi and anxious admirers under her spell the image must be carefully cultivated. Only Annabel hasn't calculated on the plans of her husband.

Remember you must die.Dame Lettie Colston is the first of her circle to receive insinuating anonymous phone calls. Neither she, nor her friends, wish to be reminded of their mortality, and their geriatric feathers are thoroughly ruffled. As the caller's activities become more widespread, old secrets are dusted off, exposing post and present duplicities, self-deception and blackmail. Nobody is above suspicion.Witty, poignant and wickedly hilarious, Memento Mori may ostensibly concern death, but it is a book which leaves one relishing life all the more.Books included in the VMC 40th anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley; Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann; Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Heartburn by Nora Ephron; The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor; and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame