• M.I. Rudomino State Library for Foreign Literature, Moscow, Russia
  
  

Passionately determined to write his novel whilst running College Sunrise, a finishing school for both sexes and mixed nationalities, Rowland Mahler is assisted by his wife, Nina Parker. This term there is a new star pupil - Chris, seventeen, also determined to write his masterpiece. As Chris's novel takes shape while his own flounders, Rowland becomes increasingly obsessed and the finishing school becomes awash with his jealousy and envy. This new novel amply displays Muriel Spark's extraordinary talent: cool, biting humour and a unique vision of human nature.

Muriel Spark was born and educated in Edinburgh, and has been active in the field of creative writing since 1950, when she won a short-story competition in the Observer. Her many subsequent novels and stories, such as Memento Mori, The Girls of Slender Means, The Only Problem, A Far Cry From Kensington and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (adapted successfully for both film and theatre), have brought pleasure to readers throughout the world. She has also written plays, poems, children's books and biographies of Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë and John Masefield. Her first autobiographical volume, Curriculum Vitae, was published in 1992. She was elected C.Litt. in 1992 and was awarded the DBE in 1993. Among many other awards she has received the Italia Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the FNAC Prix Etranger, the Saltire Prize, the Ingersoll T. S. Eliot Award and the David Cohen British Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime's literary achievement. Dame Muriel was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1978 and Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 1996.