Past winners of the awards include DH Lawrence, Muriel Spark, Cormac McCarthy and Ian McEwan.

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Barrie, or those on the cusp of modernism through the recent Muriel Spark biography by Martin Stannard?

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By the 1960s Muriel Spark guided readers through a new metropolis, where women gushed at the thought of sex and film stars, and penned unanswered letters to famous writers.

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