by Alan Taylor (Editor), Muriel Spark (Author), Zoë Strachan (Author), ZoëStrachan (Author), Muriel Spark (Author), Alan Taylor (Editor)
Described by David Lodge as `her first masterpiece', Memento Mori opens with a telephone call and the words `Remember you must die'. Over several months, a circle of elderly men and women receive similar calls and everyone becomes a suspect. As the investigating police inspector muses: `Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death, life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.'
While immersed in the indignities of old age, dementia and death, this novel is both profoundly compassionate and entertaining.
The publishers acknowledge investment from Creative Scotland towards the publication of this book.
Supported by the Muriel Spark Society.
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 240
Edition: Centenary Edition
Publisher: Polygon (An Imprint of Birlinn Limited)
Published: 16 Nov 2017
ISBN 10: 1846974275
ISBN 13: 9781846974274
Muriel Spark was born in Edinburgh in 1918. A poet, essayist, biographer and novelist, she won much international praise, including being twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Times placed her eighth in its list of the Fifty Greatest British Writers Since 1945. She died in Tuscany in 2006.
Zoe Strachan was born in Kilmarnock in 1975. Her first novel, Negative Space, was published by Picador in 2002. Zoe teaches on the Creative Writing Programme at the University of Glasgow and is on the board of directors of the Glasgow Women's Library.