{"product_id":"anita-brookner-art-and-life-by-hermione-lee","title":"Anita Brookner: Art and Life by Hermione Lee","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDATE OF RELEASE: 10 SEPT 2026\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe groundbreaking biography of Booker Prize-winning novelist and art historian Anita Brookner, from one of our leading literary biographers. Hermione Lee reveals the full story of a brilliant, idiosyncratic and complex woman and goes deep into Anita Brookner’s marvellous work in all its stylishness and daring. Born in south London in 1928, Brookner came from a family of middle-class, Polish-Jewish immigrants.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHer parents were anxious and unhappy. Until she was well into her thirties, she nursed her invalid mother with a painful mixture of love and resentment. She would have liked a marriage and children; instead, she lived alone and became a great writer of solitude, self-knowledge and survival.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFor many years she worked at the Courtauld Institute, teaching French Romanticism in art, and influencing generations of students. In her fifties she began to write fiction: her first novel was the wryly titled A Start in Life. In 1984, she won the Booker Prize for Hotel du Lac; after that, a novel appeared almost every year until her eighties.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn her lifetime Brookner was seen as an object of wonder and fascination. She was a formidable and inspiring teacher, an enormously knowledgeable, witty and perceptive art historian and critic, and a novelist like no other. Her extraordinary fictions of heroic solitude, romantic passion, longing and lethal social comedy, written with elegance and impeccable control, gained her a devoted following.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBut she also attracted hostility and bafflement, often from readers challenged by the unsentimental realism of her fierce, strange and moving books.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003eHardback | \u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003ePublication: 10 Sept 2026, Chatto \u0026amp; Windus \u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003eISBN: 9781784744687 | \u003c\/em\u003e\u003cem\u003eExtent: 448 \u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003epages\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"David's Bookshop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57565912990078,"sku":null,"price":25.2,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0753\/0892\/5225\/files\/9781784744687.jpg?v=1781709781","url":"https:\/\/www.davids-bookshops.co.uk\/products\/anita-brookner-art-and-life-by-hermione-lee","provider":"David's Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}