The Only Problem
Written by Muriel Spark / Introduction by Richard Holloway
£9.99
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Fiction
Reviews
As I entered my teens, I developed a taste for more arch, snappy writing and discovered the joys of Muriel Spark. Wisdom and wit — ideal for an impressionable youth finding his way in the world
Daily Mail
About the Book
Wealthy Canadian scholar Harvey Gotham lives in splendid isolation in France and is working on a book about Job. He loves his wife, Effie,
dearly but she has taken to planting bombs in supermarkets and has joined an anarchist group. Here, Spark returns to the Book of Job, which
had always fascinated her, and ‘the only problem’ – the problem of suffering. Why does God allow it? A despairing and exhilarating read, The
Only Problem is a masterwork.
This is one of the 22 novels written by Muriel Spark in her lifetime. All are being published by Polygon in hardback Centenary Editions between
November 2017 and September 2018.
The Authors
Muriel Spark
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.
Richard Holloway
Richard Holloway is a writer and broadcaster who was Bishop of Edinburgh from 1986 to 2000 and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church from 1992 to 2000. He has written extensively on complex ethical issues such as sexuality, drugs and bioethics and is the author of more than twenty books, including his critically acclaimed memoir Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt.
Alan Taylor
Alan Taylor has been a journalist for over 30 years. He was deputy editor and managing editor of The Scotsman, and for 15 years was Writer-at-Large for the Sunday Herald. He has contributed to numerous publications, including The Times Literary Supplement, The New Yorker and The Melbourne Age and was co-founder and editor of The Scottish Review of Books. He was editor of the centenary editions of the collected novels of Muriel Spark and has edited several acclaimed anthologies, including The Assassin’s Cloak (2000). He also wrote the bestselling Appointment in Arezzo: A Friendship with Muriel Spark (2017). He also edited Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries (2022).
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