The Takeover
- 3 Dec 2015
- 9781782117629
- £5.59
- 192 pp
In a few words
‘She shares with Barbara Pym and Iris Murdoch the magical ability to write about people from whom in life we would run a mile, but who are made fascinating by their author’s perceptions’ Spectator
Spark’s European satire on money, power and rivalry
She shares with Barbara Pym and Iris Murdoch the magical ability to write about people from whom in life we would run a mile, but who are made fascinating by their author's perceptions
My admiration for Spark's contribution to world literature knows no bounds. She was peerless, sparkling, inventive and intelligent - the crème de la crème
Ian Rankin
More about
the book
Set in Italy, The Takeover follows the rivalries and affairs playing out in the sprawling villas owned by the indomitable and glamorous American millionaire Maggie Radcliffe. Riches, drinks, crooked servants, domestic intrigue, double-edged jokes and manipulation all come together in this sparkling European satire.
Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards, decisive as a smashed glass is decisive
John Updike
New YorkerThe care with which she uses words is matched by a gloriously carefree attitude. It's all part of her sanity, her breezy authorial self-confidence; and because of this I think that reading a blast of her prose every morning is a far more restorative way to start a day than a shot of espresso
A wholly original presence in modern literature
Andrew Motion
A profoundly serious comic writer whose wit advances, never undermines or diminishes, her ideas
Muriel Spark
View profileMuriel Spark, DBE, C.Litt., was born in Edinburgh in 1918 and educated in Scotland. A poet and novelist, she is most well known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She also wrote children’s books, radio plays, the comedy Doctors of Philosophy and biographies of nineteenth-century literary figures, including Mary Shelley and Emily Brontë. Muriel Spark has garnered international praise and many awards, including the David Cohen Prize for Literature, the Ingersoll T.S. Eliot Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Boccaccio Prize for European Literature, the Gold Pen Award, the first Enlightenment Award and the Italia Prize for dramatic radio. She died in 2006.
