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'Shirley hazzard was born in 1931 in Australia, the daughter of immigrants from Scotland and Wales. Both her parents, it’s said, were involved in the construction of Sydney Harbour Bridge. She went on to live on three other continents: Asia, Europe and North America. As is sometimes the way with writers whose biographies are yet to be written (Brigitta Olubas is on the case), information about Hazzard’s life is often tinged with exoticism. She was a teenage spy in Hong Kong after the Second World War; in the 1950s she worked (in a largely secretarial capacity) for the UN; she was married to the biographer and Flaubert scholar Francis Steegmuller (they were introduced by Muriel Spark, which doesn’t seem like the most propitious start) and lived with him in New York, Naples and Capri. She suffered from dementia and died in 2016.' (Introduction)
