(Forthcoming Monograph) Exile in Muriel Spark

Spark’s self-proclaimed status as a ‘constitutional exile’ in her 1962 essay ‘What Images Return’ has been a controversial topic at the forefront of critical debate regarding the author’s Scottish identity for many years – yet comparatively little attention has been paid to the extensive literary fascination with exile that is evident in her short stories, novels, essays, interviews, archives, and autobiography. Although critics recognise Spark’s fiction is populated with ‘nomadic characters’ (Hynes, 1988, 127), ‘drawn from a rich and rootless international set’ (Page, 1990, 117), ‘a diasporic global village’ (Cheyette, 2000, 98), ‘community of exiles’ (Cheyette, 2002, 107), and ‘outcasts’ (Nowicka, 2013), the existing scholarship is devoid of an exclusive study of exile within Spark’s literature. Even with a new-found academic acceptance of Spark as a ‘literary exile’ (Craig, 2022, 14), her fiction is not read with an exilic focus, nor is she treated as an exilic writer of the late twentieth century. As such, Spark’s profound literary interest in exile requires further attention. This monograph considers exile as a central topic of investigation across her oeuvre and makes the case for Spark’s place as an exilic writer amongst her post-war contemporaries.