Described by Gore Vidal as `a novel written at the top of her form and so unique', Reality and Dreams concerns the delirious, egocentric film director Tom Richards, who is recovering from injuries sustained while falling off a crane on set. His obsessive passion to make a film about a simple young woman sucks his wife, daughters, lovers and friends into a maelstrom of destruction. 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.
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. Kirsty Gunn is a novelist and short story writer. Her stories include 'Rain', which led to the 2001 film of the same name, directed by Christine Jeffs and also the 2001 ballet by the Rosas Company. Her 2012 novel The Big Music won the Book of the Year in the 2013 New Zealand Post Book Awards. She is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Dundee.
