Author Guide · Literary Fiction
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Anita Brookner published her first novel at 53, after nearly three decades as an art historian of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French painting. In 1967 she had become the first woman to hold the Slade Professorship of Fine Art at Cambridge. A Start in Life appeared in 1981; three years later her fourth novel, Hotel du Lac, beat J.G. Ballard and Julian Barnes to the Booker Prize, and she joked that she would spend the money having her shoes resoled. She went on to publish roughly a novel a year until 2009, most of them about clever, solitary people in London and the families who shaped them. This guide covers her 13 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 13 key books · 1981–2009 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Anita Brookner wrote 24 novels between 1981 and 2009, plus an e-book novella and books on French art. Her best known is Hotel du Lac (1984), which won the Booker Prize; others readers return to are A Start in Life (1981), Look at Me (1983) and Latecomers (1988). Start with Hotel du Lac; the list below shows how the later novels widen the same territory.
Where to Start with Anita Brookner
If you want her defining book
→ Hotel du Lac (1984) — the 1984 Booker winner.
If you want where it all began
→ A Start in Life (1981) — her first novel, written at 53.
If you want a broader, family-sized story
→ Family and Friends (1985) — four siblings and their formidable mother.
If you want her late, quieter style
→ Strangers (2009) — her last full novel, about a retired man in London.
13 Anita Brookner Books, in Order
A Start in Life
Ruth Weiss, a literary scholar in her forties, looks back on a life spent looking after her ageing parents. Her attempts to break away, including an affair she plans, come to nothing, and she returns home to nurse them. It opens with the line “Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.” In the United States it was published as The Debut.
Providence
Kitty Maule teaches Romantic literature at a small English college. Raised in French ways by immigrant grandparents, she never feels quite at home in England, and she falls for Maurice Bishop, a confident Catholic colleague whose interest in her she badly misreads.
Look at Me
Frances Hinton, a young librarian at a medical research institute in London, is taken up by the doctor Nick Fraser and his glamorous wife Alix. When Frances begins a romance with a colleague, James, Alix drops her, and Frances turns her anger into the novel we are reading.
Hotel du Lac
Edith Hope, a 39-year-old London writer of romantic fiction, is sent by her friends to an off-season hotel on Lake Geneva after failing to turn up at her own wedding. She watches the other guests, writes letters to her married lover David, and receives a proposal from the wealthy Mr Neville, who wants a safe wife. It won the 1984 Booker Prize against a shortlist that included Empire of the Sun and Flaubert’s Parrot, and the BBC adapted it in 1986 with Anna Massey and Denholm Elliott.
Family and Friends
Sofka Dorn, a widow from a wealthy German Jewish family, rules her four children. She dotes on the charming Frederick and the flirtatious Betty, and is disappointed by the quiet, dutiful Alfred and Mimi. Over the years the children’s lives turn out in ways she never expected.
A Misalliance
Blanche Vernon is left by her husband of more than twenty years for his secretary. She fills her days in London’s museums, comparing the pleasure-loving women and the dutiful women she sees in paintings.
A Friend from England
Rachel, part-owner of a London bookshop, attaches herself to the Livingstones, a family who have recently won the football pools, and becomes a companion to their daughter Heather. As Heather starts to go her own way, Rachel tries to push her back towards her family.
Latecomers
Thomas Fibich and Thomas Hartmann are sent to England as children from Nazi Germany, where their families perish. They become schoolfriends, then business partners and neighbours for life, and the novel follows how differently each of them comes to terms with the past.
Lewis Percy
Lewis, a shy young scholar writing a thesis on heroism in the nineteenth-century novel, loses his mother and marries Tissy, a fragile colleague from the library, partly to rescue her. When the marriage falters and Tissy suspects him of an affair, he tries to behave honourably, like the heroes he studies.
Fraud
Anna Durrant, a middle-aged single woman in London, has disappeared. Flashbacks show her years caring for her invalid mother, the bleak period after her mother’s death, and a mild flirtation with the mother’s doctor.
Incidents in the Rue Laugier
The narrator reconstructs her mother’s life from the few notes in her journals. Maud, a young Frenchwoman, meets two Englishmen at her aunt’s country house, falls in love with David Tyler, and marries Edward Harrison; the two of them lead quiet, thwarted lives.
The Next Big Thing
Julius Herz, 73 and retired, lives alone in his flat and wonders what to do with the years he has left: travel, sell his home, or propose to a woman he has not seen in thirty years. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2002 and published in the United States as Making Things Better.
Strangers
Paul Sturgis, a retired bachelor in London, keeps up dutiful visits to Helena, the widow of his cousin. Escaping her Christmas invitation, he goes to Venice and meets Vicky, a divorced woman twenty years younger, and then runs into Sarah, a former girlfriend. It was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was her last full-length novel.
In What Order to Read Anita Brookner
None of the novels continue from one another, so you can read in any order. Publication order is still useful: the first four are about young or youngish women and what they hope for; from Family and Friends and Latecomers onwards she widens the cast to whole families and to men; the late books, from The Next Big Thing to Strangers, are about old age and what is left to decide.
If Hotel du Lac is too familiar, A Start in Life is the best way in, because it states her themes most plainly. Read Latecomers for the Jewish refugee background that sits behind many of her characters.
A reading path
1. Hotel du Lac (1984)
2. A Start in Life (1981)
3. Family and Friends (1985)
4. Latecomers (1988)
5. Strangers (2009)
Everything Else Anita Brookner Published
Beyond the 13 key books: 17 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other novels
11
11 books · 1990–2005
- 1990Brief Livesan ageing widow looks back on a long, uneasy friendship
- 1991A Closed Eyea woman married young to a rich, much older man
- 1993A Family Romancepublished in the US as Dolly
- 1994A Private Viewa newly retired London bachelor and a young American drifter
- 1996Altered Statesa London solicitor looks back on hopes he never acted on
- 1997Visitorsan elderly widow’s routine is broken by a family wedding
- 1998Falling Slowlytwo sisters, a pianist and a translator, in middle age
- 1999Undue Influencea perceptive young woman blind to her own vulnerability
- 2001The Bay of Angelsa daughter and her mother on the French Riviera
- 2003The Rules of Engagementtwo schoolfriends whose lives diverge
- 2005Leaving Homea young Englishwoman in Paris
Novella
1
1 book · 2011
- 2011At the Hairdresser’sa short novella published only as an e-book
Art history and criticism
5
5 books · 1971–2000
- 1971The Genius of the Futurebased on her Slade lectures at Cambridge
- 1972Greuzegrew out of her doctoral thesis on Jean-Baptiste Greuze
- 1980Jacques-Louis Davida study of the painter of the French Revolution
- 1997Soundingsessays from the TLS and the London Review of Books
- 2000Romanticism and Its Discontentsa study of French Romanticism
The years · 1928–2016
Quick facts about Anita Brookner
- Known for
- Quiet, precise novels about clever, solitary people, above all the 1984 Booker winner Hotel du Lac, written after a long first career as an art historian.
- 1928
- Born in Herne Hill, south London
- 1967
- First woman Slade Professor at Cambridge
- 1984
- Hotel du Lac
- 1990
- Appointed CBE
- 2016
- Dies in London, aged 87
- Born
- 16 July 1928, Herne Hill, London; only child of Polish Jewish parents
- Education
- King’s College London; doctorate at the Courtauld Institute, 1953
- First career
- Art historian at the Courtauld; Slade Professor at Cambridge, 1967–1968
- Novels
- 24, from A Start in Life (1981) to Strangers (2009)
- Prizes
- Booker Prize, 1984; CBE, 1990
- Died
- 10 March 2016, London, aged 87
The red mark is 1984: Hotel du Lac, her fourth novel, which won the Booker Prize.
How Anita Brookner Writes: Art History Turned Inward
Brookner came to fiction late and almost as an experiment. Asked by The Paris Review in 1987 why she began, she said: “I wondered how it was done and the only way to find out seemed to be to try and do it.” After the first novel she kept a steady rhythm, close to one book a year for more than two decades.
Her novels are short, set mostly in London flats, hotels and museums, and driven by thought rather than event. The central figure is often an educated, single person, frequently the child of European Jewish immigrants, who has looked after parents and watched bolder people take what they want. Her art-historical eye shows directly: in A Misalliance Blanche Vernon reads her own situation through the women in the paintings she visits in London’s museums, and in Hotel du Lac Edith is a novelist observing the other guests like subjects.
The style is formal and exact, with long, balanced sentences and dry irony. She told The Paris Review she still read a Dickens novel every year. Hermione Lee’s 2026 biography, Anita Brookner: Art & Life, argues against her reputation as unloved and lonely, and describes her as a romantic writer behind a controlled manner.
Frequently asked questions about Anita Brookner’s books
How many books has Anita Brookner written?
24 novels, published between 1981 and 2009, plus At the Hairdresser’s (2011), a novella published only as an e-book, and five books of art history and criticism. This page covers her 13 key novels; the rest are in the list above.
What are Anita Brookner’s books in order?
The key novels are A Start in Life (1981), Providence (1982), Look at Me (1983), Hotel du Lac (1984), Family and Friends (1985), A Misalliance (1986), A Friend from England (1987), Latecomers (1988), Lewis Percy (1989), Fraud (1992), Incidents in the Rue Laugier (1995), The Next Big Thing (2002) and Strangers (2009).
Where should I start with Anita Brookner?
With Hotel du Lac (1984): it is short, it won the Booker Prize, and it contains all her main themes. If you want to go back to the beginning, A Start in Life (1981) states them most directly.
What is Anita Brookner’s most famous book?
Hotel du Lac, her fourth novel, about a romance writer sent to a quiet Swiss hotel after abandoning her wedding. It won the 1984 Booker Prize.
Did Anita Brookner win the Booker Prize?
Yes, in 1984 for Hotel du Lac. The shortlist included J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun, Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot and David Lodge’s Small World; Brookner said she had expected Ballard to win. The Next Big Thing was longlisted in 2002.
Has Hotel du Lac been adapted?
Yes. The BBC made a television film in 1986, adapted by Christopher Hampton, with Anna Massey as Edith Hope and Denholm Elliott.
How old was Anita Brookner when she started writing novels?
53. A Start in Life was published in 1981, after nearly thirty years as an art historian at the Courtauld Institute.
Was Anita Brookner an art historian?
Yes. She specialised in French art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, wrote books on Greuze and Jacques-Louis David, taught at the Courtauld Institute, and in 1967 became the first woman to hold the Slade Professorship of Fine Art at Cambridge.
Is Anita Brookner still alive?
No. She was born in Herne Hill, London, on 16 July 1928 and died in London on 10 March 2016, aged 87. She never married and asked for no funeral.
Is there a biography of Anita Brookner?
Yes. Hermione Lee’s Anita Brookner: Art & Life was published in 2026. It draws on her life as an only child of Polish Jewish parents, her academic career and her strict daily routines.
Footnotes
- Anita Brookner — Wikipedia
- Hotel du Lac — Wikipedia
- The 1984 Booker Prize — The Booker Prizes
- Anita Brookner, The Art of Fiction No. 98 — The Paris Review, 1987
- Obituary: Anita Brookner, novelist — The Scotsman, 2016
- Anita Brookner by Hermione Lee — Kirkus Reviews, 2026
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.”
— Anita Brookner, A Start in Life (1981), the first line of her first novel
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