Anita Brookner: Art and Life

'It would be hard to think of a better biographer for this uniquely contradictory intellectual…. piercingly intelligent… Lee’s biography … has joie de vivre, high humour and energetic compassion for the multiplying complexities of the human mind' The ObserverThe groundbreaking biography of Booker Prize-winning novelist and art historian Anita Brookner, from one of our leading literary biographers. Anita Brookner was an intensely private person who kept her friends in separate compartments and had secrets she never revealed. She grew tired of the assumption that her lonely heroines were versions of herself, and resisted autobiographical readings of her books. But she gave away many intriguing glimpses of her own family life in interviews, and her own feelings, experiences and preoccupations fill her writings. Her life story, both hidden and exposed, makes compelling reading. 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. Praise for Anita Brookner:‘No one writes with more skill and honesty about the human condition ’ Observer'So fine a novelist that she deserves to be judged always in a class of her own' Selina Hastings'How can anything be so funny and so sad both at once?' Tessa Hadley, Guardian‘An icon . . . Wonderful, lucid prose’ Jilly Cooper‘The beauty and precision of Brookner’s writing is rightly praised . . . but what is less often remarked on is her daring’ Helen Dunmore, The Times

• Publication date: 10 September 2026
• Page count: 544
• Dimensions: Height 165 mm; Width 243 mm; Thickness 49 mm
• Publisher: Vintage Publishing
• Format: Hardback
• ISBN-13: 9781784744687