Anita Brookner – författare

‘Excellent’ Sunday Times‘Enormously sophisticated’ Financial Times'Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.'Dr Ruth Weiss, an academic, is beautiful, intelligent and lonely. Studying the heroines of Balzac in order to discover where her own childhood and adult life has gone awry, she seeks not salvation but enlightenment.As she revisits her London upbringing, her friendships and doomed Parisian love affairs of years gone by, she begins to wonder whether perhaps there might still be a chance for a new start in life . . .‘A delight … Amusing and beautifully written’ The Times‘The unerring, unflinching Brookner is still a much underestimated novelist’ Helen Dunmore, The Times, praise for Anita Brookner‘Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night’ Hilary Mantel, praise for Anita Brookner

Winner of the Booker Prize'The Hotel du Lac was a dignified building, a house of repute, a traditional establishment, used to welcoming the prudent, the well-to-do, the retired, the self-effacing, the respected patrons of an earlier era'Into the rarefied atmosphere of the Hotel du Lac timidly walks Edith Hope, romantic novelist and holder of modest dreams. Edith has been exiled from home after embarrassing herself and her friends. She has refused to sacrifice her ideals and remains stubbornly single. But among the pampered women and minor nobility Edith finds Mr Neville, and her chance to escape from a life of humiliating loneliness is renewed . . .'A classic . . . a book which will be read with pleasure a hundred years from now' Spectator'A smashing love story. It is very romantic. It is also humorous, witty, touching and formidably clever' The Times'Hotel du Lac is written with a beautiful grave formality, and it catches at the heart' Observer'Her technique as a novelist is so sure and so quietly commanding' Hilary Mantel, Guardian'She is one of the great writers of contemporary fiction' Literary Review

'He was haunted by a feeling of invisibility, as if he were a mere spectator of his own life, with no one to identify him in the barren circumstances of the here and now.'Paul Sturgis is a retired banker manager who lives alone in a dark little flat. He walks alone and dines alone, seeking out and taking pleasure in small exchanges with strangers: the cheerful Australian girl who cuts his hair, the lady at the drycleaners. His only relative, and only acquaintance, is a widowed cousin by marriage - herself a virtual stranger - to whom he pays ritualistic visits on a Sunday afternoon. Trying to make sense of his current solitary state, and fearing that his destiny may be to die among strangers, Sturgis trawls through memories of his failed relationships and finds himself longing for companionship, or at the very least a conversation. But then a chance encounter with a stranger - a recently divorced and demanding younger woman - shakes up his routine and when an old girlfriend appears on the scene, Sturgis is forced to make a decision about how (and with whom) he wants to spend the rest of his days . . . 'Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night' Hilary Mantel, Guardian'No one writes with more skill and honesty about the human condition and this book is possibly her finest' Julie Myerson, Observer'A novel of great stylistic beauty and psychological truth. As great a reflection on fear and regret as Philip Larkin or Beckett' Guardian'Like Graham Greene, she draws the reader into a world that has a character and signature all of its own . . . Strangers is a novel of sober brilliance, and the unerring, unflinching Brookner is still a much underestimated novelist' Helen Dunmore, The TimesAnita Brookner was born in south London in 1928, the daughter of a Polish immigrant family. She trained as an art historian, and worked at the Courtauld Institute of Art until her retirement in 1988. She published her first novel, A Start in Life, in 1981 and her twenty-fourth, Strangers, in 2009. Hotel du Lac won the 1984 Booker Prize. As well as fiction, Anita Brookner has published a number of volumes of art criticism.

‘She has never written a better novel’ Ruth Rendell‘Quietly commanding’ Hilary Mantel'No man is free of his own history' Hartmann and Fibich came to England on the Kindertransport: orphans of the war, and strangers in a strange land. Together, they survived. Now, in adulthood, they have been unable to separate. They share a successful business, but they are also bound by the shaky foundations of their own pasts. Hartmann’s carefully polished manners conceal the past he refuses to think about, while Fibich, a mass of fears and neuroses, can do nothing but remember.Their friendship steers them through the decades, as they become husbands, fathers, men. And then comes the day when Fibich must make the journey back to Berlin, to the railway station where he last saw his mother . . .‘One of the warmest of her novels, rich with family affection, shadowed by history’ Tessa Hadley‘The last great novelist of the twentieth century’ Daily Telegraph‘Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night’ Hilary Mantel, praise for Anita Brookner

The Rules of Engagement is the twenty second novel by Anita Brookner, the Booker Prize winning author of Hotel du Lac.Elizabeth and Betsy are old school friends. Born in 1948 and unready for the sixties, they had high hopes of the lives they would lead, even though their circumstances were so different.When they meet again in their thirties, Elizabeth, married to the safe, older Digby is relieving the boredom of a cosy but childless marriage with an affair. Betsy seems to have found real romance in Paris. Are their lives taking off, or are they just making more of the wrong choices without even realising it?'One of the most observant moralists writing today. A dark, wintry work and there is plenty here to satisfy Brookner's fans' Guardian'Her technique as a novelist is so sure and so quietly commanding' Hilary Mantel, Guardian'She is one of the great writers of contemporary fiction' Literary ReviewAnita Brookner was born in south London in 1928, the daughter of a Polish immigrant family. She trained as an art historian, and worked at the Courtauld Institute of Art until her retirement in 1988. She published her first novel, A Start in Life, in 1981 and her twenty-fourth, Strangers, in 2009. Hotel du Lac won the 1984 Booker Prize. As well as fiction, Anita Brookner has published a number of volumes of art criticism.

Strangers is the twenty fourth novel by Anita Brookner, the Booker Prize winning author of Hotel du Lac. Paul Sturgis is a retired banker manager who lives alone in a dark little flat. He walks alone and dines alone, seeking out and taking pleasure in small exchanges with strangers: the cheerful Australian girl who cuts his hair, the lady at the drycleaners. His only relative, and only acquaintance, is a widowed cousin by marriage - herself a virtual stranger - to whom he pays ritualistic visits on a Sunday afternoon. Trying to make sense of his current solitary state, and fearing that his destiny may be to die among strangers, Sturgis trawls through memories of his failed relationships and finds himself longing for companionship, or at the very least a conversation. But then a chance encounter with a stranger - a recently divorced and demanding younger woman - shakes up his routine and when an old girlfriend appears on the scene, Sturgis is forced to make a decision about how (and with whom) he wants to spend the rest of his days . . . 'Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night' Hilary Mantel, Guardian'No one writes with more skill and honesty about the human condition and this book is possibly her finest' Julie Myerson, Observer'A novel of great stylistic beauty and psychological truth. As great a reflection on fear and regret as Philip Larkin or Beckett' Guardian'Like Graham Greene, she draws the reader into a world that has a character and signature all of its own . . . Strangers is a novel of sober brilliance, and the unerring, unflinching Brookner is still a much underestimated novelist' Helen Dunmore, The TimesAnita Brookner was born in south London in 1928, the daughter of a Polish immigrant family. She trained as an art historian, and worked at the Courtauld Institute of Art until her retirement in 1988. She published her first novel, A Start in Life, in 1981 and her twenty-fourth, Strangers, in 2009. Hotel du Lac won the 1984 Booker Prize. As well as fiction, Anita Brookner has published a number of volumes of art criticism.

Winner of the Booker Prize'The Hotel du Lac was a dignified building, a house of repute, a traditional establishment, used to welcoming the prudent, the well-to-do, the retired, the self-effacing, the respected patrons of an earlier era'Into the rarefied atmosphere of the Hotel du Lac timidly walks Edith Hope, romantic novelist and holder of modest dreams. Edith has been exiled from home after embarrassing herself and her friends. She has refused to sacrifice her ideals and remains stubbornly single. But among the pampered women and minor nobility Edith finds Mr Neville, and her chance to escape from a life of humiliating loneliness is renewed . . .'A classic . . . a book which will be read with pleasure a hundred years from now' Spectator'A smashing love story. It is very romantic. It is also humorous, witty, touching and formidably clever' The Times'Hotel du Lac is written with a beautiful grave formality, and it catches at the heart' Observer'Her technique as a novelist is so sure and so quietly commanding' Hilary Mantel, Guardian'She is one of the great writers of contemporary fiction' Literary Review

'I had spent that morbid Sunday wondering if simple happiness were available to all and had come to the conclusion that it was not. One had to make a determined bid for it, and I did not quite know how this was done.'Enigmatic Claire is 30 and lives alone. When she meets Martin Gibson, a faded scholar, she becomes inordinately interested. She is even more interested when she meets his wife, a far more spectacular personality. But the unexpected news of this woman's death releases emotions that were not entirely foreseen.

‘She has never written a better novel’ Ruth Rendell‘Quietly commanding’ Hilary Mantel'No man is free of his own history' Hartmann and Fibich came to England on the Kindertransport: orphans of the war, and strangers in a strange land. Together, they survived. Now, in adulthood, they have been unable to separate. They share a successful business, but they are also bound by the shaky foundations of their own pasts. Hartmann’s carefully polished manners conceal the past he refuses to think about, while Fibich, a mass of fears and neuroses, can do nothing but remember.Their friendship steers them through the decades, as they become husbands, fathers, men. And then comes the day when Fibich must make the journey back to Berlin, to the railway station where he last saw his mother . . .‘One of the warmest of her novels, rich with family affection, shadowed by history’ Tessa Hadley‘The last great novelist of the twentieth century’ Daily Telegraph‘Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night’ Hilary Mantel, praise for Anita Brookner

‘No one writes with more skill and honesty about the human condition and this book is possibly her finest’ ObserverTHE MESMERISING FINAL NOVEL BY THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF HOTEL DU LAC, NOW WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY TESSA HADLEY‘He was haunted by a feeling of invisibility, as if he were a mere spectator of his own life, with no one to identify him in the barren circumstances of the here and now’Paul Sturgis – unmarried, retired, and coming towards the end of his life – lives alone in a small dark flat which has never felt like home. Each day, he walks the streets of London, passing brightly lit windows into other people’s lives and finding pleasure in fleeting exchanges with strangers: the cheerful hairdresser, the lady at the drycleaners, a café stop for a cup of coffee. When he longs for light and warmth, he takes short trips to the continent, but it is to London that he always returns.Fearing that his destiny may be to live and die among strangers, and longing for companionship or simply conversation, Paul finds himself drawn back to memories of his own failed relationships. But when a chance encounter with a recently divorced younger woman shakes up his routine, and an old girlfriend appears on the scene, he is forced to make a decision about how – and with whom – he wants to spend the rest of his days.‘A novel of sober brilliance, and the unerring, unflinching Brookner is still a much underestimated novelist’ Helen Dunmore, The Times‘Nothing less than brilliant, often highly amusing and, ultimately life affirming’ Sunday Telegraph

Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. Written to be read over a long commute or a short journey, they are original and exclusively in digital form. This is a poignant novella from Anita Brookner.'I rather hope I shall die at the hairdresser's, for they are bound to know what to do. At least that is what I tell myself.'Solitude is a familiar burden for Elizabeth Warner. She lives in a basement flat near Victoria and leaves the house only to go shopping and to have her hair done - until a chance encounter at the hairdresser's brings unexpected change. At the Hairdresser's is a deeply moving, unflinchingly observed story about trust and betrayal by one of the greatest writers of contemporary fiction.

Emma Roberts leaves home for the first time in her twenties, travelling to Paris to study seventeenth-century garden design. There, she meets vivacious Françoise Desnoyers and is quickly drawn into her passionate and complicated world. But Françoise's demands - deceiving her formidable mother over a love affair - leave Emma feeling exposed and vulnerable, and yearning for the safety and comfort of her London home. Yet when an unexpected family tragedy turns that life upside down, Emma comes to realize the impossibility of returning to a home you have already left behind...

‘One of her very best’ Spectator‘Subtle, original and emotionally resonant’ Sunday Telegraph'It was at Millie's party, on that Friday evening, that she met her second husband, my stepfather-to-be, and thus changed both our lives . . .'Zoë is delighted when her widowed mother marries Simon, a generous older man who owns a villa in Nice. She is enchanted by the visits to France that follow, but they come to an abrupt end when Simon suffers a bad fall. Finding themselves thrust into uncertainty and surrounded by well-meaning strangers, Zoë and her mother must learn how - and how not - to trust appearances . . .‘Brookner in all her wisdom, eloquence and power’ Spectator‘Anita Brookner has proved herself so fine a novelist that she deserves to be judged always in a class of her own’ Selina Hastings‘Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night’ Hilary Mantel, praise for Anita Brookner

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE‘Infinitely moving’ Literary Review‘Exceptional’ Sunday Telegraph‘This would soon be a new day, all too closely resembling the others, the normal days of his present existence, in which nothing happened nor could be expected to happen’At seventy-three, Herz is struggling to know what to do with his final years. The world feels increasingly bewildering, and he can no longer see his place in it. Questions and misunderstandings haunt Herz like old ghosts. Should he travel? Should he sell his flat, or perhaps propose marriage to an old friend he has not seen in thirty years? Herz doesn’t quite know what the next big thing in his life should be – but he knows he must do something . . . ‘Impressive. Beautifully written with flashes of charm and wisdom’ Sunday Times‘Brookner is a brilliant writer, her prose near perfect, and she captures extremely poignantly the loneliness, the anxieties, the insecurity of old age’ Sunday Independent‘Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night’ Hilary Mantel, praise for Anita Brookner

'She hoped one day to find the image she unconsciously sought, without knowing why she sought it, something to lift the spirits, to transport her on an imaginary journey, to give a hint of the transcendence which was so blatantly lacking in her everyday life of words and paper.'Beatrice and Miriam are sisters, sharing little except a traditional childhood that has left them burdened with unhappy memories.Beatrice is a pianist, a romantic, who believes in love, while Miriam, who married the rather colourless Jonathan Eldon for pragmatic reasons, companionship, status, is not beyond disillusionment. Following her divorce, she returns to Beatrice, who is beginning to appear fragile. While they share a home and a few acquaintances, neither confides to the other what is in their hearts.For the beautiful Beatrice, now prepared to settle for friendship and closeness rather than passion, there is Max and the hope of the carving a contented future with him. For Miriam there is love and esteem - and, finally, certainty.

‘Excellent’ Sunday Times‘Enormously sophisticated’ Financial Times'Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.'Dr Ruth Weiss, an academic, is beautiful, intelligent and lonely. Studying the heroines of Balzac in order to discover where her own childhood and adult life has gone awry, she seeks not salvation but enlightenment.As she revisits her London upbringing, her friendships and doomed Parisian love affairs of years gone by, she begins to wonder whether perhaps there might still be a chance for a new start in life . . .‘A delight … Amusing and beautifully written’ The Times‘The unerring, unflinching Brookner is still a much underestimated novelist’ Helen Dunmore, The Times, praise for Anita Brookner‘Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night’ Hilary Mantel, praise for Anita Brookner

Kitty Maule wants to be 'totally unreasonable, totally unfair, very demanding, and very beautiful.'Instead, she is clever, hesitant and too patient for her own good. For years, she has been in love with her colleague Maurice Bishop, a charming English lecturer who seems not to notice her feelings. But when there comes a chance to accompany Maurice to France on a study of French cathedrals, Kitty sees an opporunity to be the woman she has always wanted to be as well as at last make the man she wants fall in love with her. But why is that the closer she gets to Maurice, the more elusive he seems to become?

‘Bewitching’ The Times‘Flawless’ Observer'Once a thing is known it can never be unknown'By day Frances Hinton works in a medical library, passing the time by studying her colleagues and taking notes for the novel she might write one day. Each night she returns to a vast mansion flat, which has felt bigger and emptier since her mother’s recent death.Then Frances meets charming Nick and his dazzling wife Alix, and finds herself drawn into their tight circle of friends, her diary suddenly full of engagements and excitement. So taken is Frances with her glittering new life that she doesn’t consider that the couple could discard her just as quickly as they picked her up, or that just one act in defiance of Alix’s wishes might see her lose everything. Until, of course, it is too late…‘How can anything be so funny and so sad both at once? Every sentence is an object lesson in compression and wit’ Tessa Hadley, Guardian‘No one writes with more skill and honesty about the human condition’ Observer‘Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night’ Hilary Mantel, praise for Anita Brookner

Beginning with a wedding photograph, this story charts the loves and lives of a family and their friends, following each of them through their own struggles, triumphs and sorrows.

‘Bewitching’ The Times‘Flawless’ Observer'Once a thing is known it can never be unknown'By day Frances Hinton works in a medical library, passing the time by studying her colleagues and taking notes for the novel she might write one day. Each night she returns to a vast mansion flat, which has felt bigger and emptier since her mother’s recent death.Then Frances meets charming Nick and his dazzling wife Alix, and finds herself drawn into their tight circle of friends, her diary suddenly full of engagements and excitement. So taken is Frances with her glittering new life that she doesn’t consider that the couple could discard her just as quickly as they picked her up, or that just one act in defiance of Alix’s wishes might see her lose everything. Until, of course, it is too late…‘How can anything be so funny and so sad both at once? Every sentence is an object lesson in compression and wit’ Tessa Hadley, Guardian‘No one writes with more skill and honesty about the human condition’ Observer‘Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night’ Hilary Mantel, praise for Anita Brookner

'Sofka gazes ahead, with her family's future before her . . .'Sofka Dorn, widowed matriarch of a prosperous German Jewish family living in England, rules her four children with an exacting hand. Frederick, the eldest son, is a disgracefully charming 'ladies' man, and like his flirtatious sister, Betty, is adored and indulged by his mother. Alfred and Mimi, both steady and solitary, are a disappointment to Sofka, who values strength and boldness of spirit. But, as their story unfolds, it becomes clear that the lives each must live and the times each must endure will change them in ways even Sofka could never have imagined.

'The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of.'Destined to be a haunter of libraries, Lewis's cautious progress through life reveals to him only his own shortcomings. Estranged from his wife and daughter, he searches for an alternative. This novel presents the life and aspirations of one man who remains out of step with his times.

'The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of.'Destined to be a haunter of libraries, Lewis's cautious progress through life reveals to him only his own shortcomings. Estranged from his wife and daughter, he searches for an alternative. This novel presents the life and aspirations of one man who remains out of step with his times.

‘One of her very best’ Spectator‘Subtle, original and emotionally resonant’ Sunday Telegraph'It was at Millie's party, on that Friday evening, that she met her second husband, my stepfather-to-be, and thus changed both our lives . . .'Zoë is delighted when her widowed mother marries Simon, a generous older man who owns a villa in Nice. She is enchanted by the visits to France that follow, but they come to an abrupt end when Simon suffers a bad fall. Finding themselves thrust into uncertainty and surrounded by well-meaning strangers, Zoë and her mother must learn how - and how not - to trust appearances . . .‘Brookner in all her wisdom, eloquence and power’ Spectator‘Anita Brookner has proved herself so fine a novelist that she deserves to be judged always in a class of her own’ Selina Hastings‘Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night’ Hilary Mantel, praise for Anita Brookner

'I never liked her, nor did she like me; strange, then, how we managed to keep up a sort of friendship for so long.'Fay Langdon has relinquished her singing career to marry Owen, a highly successful solicitor. At one of their dinner parties Fay meets the glamorous, self-obsessed Julia and is destined to join the handful of acolytes who provide Julia with ammunition for her merciless scorn and disapprobation. As the years pass and Fay and Julia's lives grow empty of purpose, they are drawn together by their fear of age and isolation. Yet a mutual mistrust continues to exist between them until Fay is driven to one last heroic act.

'Without warning, it seemed, she had become a married woman.'Naive and undemanding, Harriet Lytton expects very little of life and that is what she recieves. Married to a respectable man old enough to be her father, Harriet's only taste of passion comes when she meets Jack Peckham, the unruly, attractive husband of her friend Tessa.Tessa and Harriet have for many years been bound together by their childhood friendship and the imposed alliance of their two daughters, Imogen and Lizzie. But events conspire to shatter the gentle rhythm of Harriet's life. Tragically restrained by her own cautious choices, she faces the cruellest losses of all: those of hope and desire.

'Oh, she'll turn up all right. Somewhere or other. Trouble is, we won't know where to look.'Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Anna Durrant's acquaintances realize that Anna has gone missing. Normally so reliable, so helpful, she has neglected what duties remain to her after the death of her mother and taken flight. Lawrence Halliday, the family doctor, trapped in a trying marriage to the predatory Vickie, is the first to notice Anna's disappearance. Mrs Marsh, a critical friend of Anna's mother, had hoped that her arrogant son Nick might take an interest in Anna, but he is seeking greater sophistication and worldliness. And as for Anna herself, she has not so much disappeared as ceased to exist as the woman they all thought they knew.

'Seated at a café table, in the syrupy warmth of out-of-season Nice, he reviewed his life and found it to be alarmingly empty.'George Bland had planned to spend his retirement in leisurely travel and modest entertainment with his friend Putnam. When Putnam dies George is left attempting to impose some purpose on the solitary end of his life. Then Katy Gibb appears as a temporary resident, perhaps even squatter, in a neighbouring apartment. Greedy, selfish, sometimes alluring, often manipulative, Katy exerts a strange influence on George, forcing him to recognize that his own careful, fastidious life has shown a distinct lack of passion and daring. As the realization takes hold, George must decide how much - or how little - he can do to transform the status quo.

'I have reached the age when a woman begins to perceive that she is growing into the person whom she least plans to resemble: her mother.'Nadine has always wanted her daughter Maud to be married and off her hands. When the two women are staying at Nadine's sister's house near Meaux, they become part of a sophisticated, wordly group into which neither Maud nor Edward Harrison, a young visitor from England, seem to fit. Maud is swept off her feet by David Tyler, a stylish, irresponsible young man who robs her of her innocence and disappears. Edward, forced into adulthood by his inheritance of a bookshop, and thus a career, takes Maud into his care. But for both of them the shadow of Tyler is always there, illuminating their feelings of inadequacy, disappointment and loss.