Anita Brookner

La novela más emblemática de Anita Brookner, una de las grandes escritoras inglesas del siglo xx. «A veces pensaba que el tiempo que pasaba urdiendo las tramas de sus novelas había sido una preparaci

La novela más emblemática de Anita Brookner, una de las grandes escritoras inglesas del siglo xx.«A veces pensaba que el tiempo que pasaba urdiendo las tramas de sus novelas había sido una preparació

«A sus cuarenta años, la doctora Weiss comprendió que la literaturale había destrozado la vida.» Ruth Weiss es una profesora universitariainteligente y solitaria que se ha especializado en los person

«Vidas breves» es la historia de una amistad improbable, la de la extravagante, glamurosa y muy egocéntrica Julia y la de la modesta e introvertida Fay, la narradora de esta novela, que abandonó su d

Winner of the Booker Prize, the beautiful, romantic and gorgeously philosophical Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner is part of our Penguin Essential series which spotlights the very best of our modern classicsThe 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 eraInto 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 SpectatorHumorous, witty, touching and formidably clever The TimesHotel du Lac is written with a beautiful grave formality, and it catches at the heart ObserverSo sure and so quietly commanding Hilary Mantel, Guardian

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 spinsterhood is renewed ...

The latecomers are Hartmann and Fibich, brought over to England as children to escape Nazi Germany, now living close to each other in London in their 60s, and still friends. Yet they could not be more different, each having adopted different strategies to reconcile themselves with their past and to cope with an uncertain world.

''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 retired and lives alone in South Kensington. He walks alone and dines alone, taking pleasure in small exchanges with strangers. His only acquaintance is a widowed cousin whom he visits on Sundays. Unable to make sense of his solitary nature, and fearing death among strangers, he wonders whether at last he might be ready for companionship. But a chance meeting with an old girlfriend and an encounter in Venice with a recently divorced younger woman compel Sturgis to decide how (and with whom) he will spend the rest of his days