Shirley Hazzard (1931-2016) was born in Australia and travelled the world during her early years, a result of her parents' diplomatic postings. In 1947, at the age of sixteen, she was engaged by British intelligence to monitor the civil war in China. At twenty, she moved to New York, working for the United Nations throughout much of the 1950s, which included a posting to Naples. Muriel Spark introduced her to the translator and biographer Francis Steegmuller, whom Hazzard married in 1963. Her novels The Bay of Noon (1971) and The Transit of Venus (1981) were National Book Award finalists, while her last novel, The Great Fire, won the 2003 National Book Award, Miles Franklin Award and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. She was also the author of two collections of short stories, and several works of nonfiction including the memoir Greene on Capri.
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