The Finishing School, Paperback

From Muriel Spark, the grande dame of literary satire, comes this swift, deliciously witty tale of writerly ambition that recalls her beloved The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.College Sunrise is a somewhat louche and vaguely disreputable finishing school located, for now, in Lausanne, Switzerland. Rowland Mahler and his wife, Nina, run the school as a way to support themselves while he works, somewhat falteringly, on his novel. Into Rowland's creative writing class comes seventeen-year-old Chris Wiley, a red-haired literary prodigy whose historical novel-in-progress, on Mary Queen of Scots, has already excited the interest of publishers. The inevitable result: keen envy, and a game of cat and mouse fraught with jealousy and attraction, both literary and sexual.

MURIEL SPARK was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1918. She is the author of over twenty novels as well as collections of short stories. Her most celebrated works include The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), Loitering with Intent (1981), The Comforters (1957), The Public Image (1968), The Girls of Slender Means (1963), The Driver's Seat (1970) and Aiding and Abetting (2001). She was awarded the OBE in 1993 and is a Dame of the British Empire. She has also been awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of Edinburgh, as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She lives in Tuscany.