'The greatest Scottish novelist of modern times . . . She was peerless, sparkling, inventive and intelligent - the creme de la creme.' Ian Rankin

One October evening five London couples gather for a dinner party, enjoying 'the pheasant (flambe in cognac as it is)' and waiting for the imminent arrival of the late-coming guest Hilda Damien, who has been unavoidably detained due to the fact that she is being murdered at this very moment.

With an introduction by Ian Rankin.

Symposium is Muriel Spark - one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century and author of classics including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - at her wicked best.

'A rich, heady, disturbing brew.' Lorna Sage

'Extremely clever and highly entertaining.' Penelope Lively

'Stiletto-sharp fiction.' Alan Taylor, Scotland on Sunday

* Review coverage * Featured on the Virago website

About the Author
Muriel Spark, D.B.E, C. Litt, was born in Edinburgh in 1918. A poet and novelist, she also wrote children's books, radio plays, a comedy, 'Doctors of Philosophy', first performed in London in 1962, and biographies. She is best known for her stories and many successful novels, including Memento Mori, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Loitering With Intent, The Comforters, A Far Cry from Kensington and The Public Image. For her long career of literary achievement, Muriel Spark won international praise and many awards, including the David Cohen British Literature Award, the T. S. Eliot Award, the Saltire Prize, the Boccaccio Prize for European Literature, the Gold Pen Award and the Italia Prize for dramatic radio. Muriel Spark was given an honorary doctorate of Letters from a number of universities, London, Edinburgh and Oxford among these. She died in 2006. Born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, Ian Rankin graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982, and then spent three years writing novels when he was supposed to be working towards a PhD in Scottish Literature. His first novel The Flood was published in 1986, while his first Rebus novel, Knots & Crosses, was published in 1987. The Rebus series is now translated into twenty-two languages and the books are bestsellers on several continents. Ian has received an OBE for services to literature, opting to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his wife and two sons.

Reviews
The greatest Scottish novelist of modern times . . . She was peerless, sparkling, inventive and intelligent - the creme de la creme * Ian Rankin *
Extremely clever and highly entertaining ... A young bride is seen to have been connected, apparently by chance, with a sequence of untimely deaths ... Symposium is put together like an intricate jigsaw puzzle * Penelope Lively *
This is the story of a dinner party, a knot of people with pasts and connections which at first seem few but are later found to be many ... The prevailing mood is urbane: the wine is poured, the talk continues, and all the time the ice on which the protagonist s' world rests is being thinned from beneath by boiling emotions and ugly motives ... No living writer handles the tension between formality of expression and the subversiveness of thought more elegantly * Candia McWilliam, Independent on Sunday *
Stiletto-sharp fiction...as in the bitter confections of Ivy Compton-Burnett, it is the dialogue that propels this dangerous, devilish book * Alan Taylor, Scotland on Sunday *



Book Information
ISBN 9781844082476
Author Muriel Spark
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Virago Press Ltd
Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
Weight(grams) 140g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 126mm * 12mm