Hotel Du Lac

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • In the novel that established her international reputation, Anita Brookner finds a new way to frame the eternal question, “Why love?”

“Brookner’s most absorbing novel … wryly realistic … graceful and attractive.” —Anne Tyler, The New York Times Book Review

When middle-aged romance writer Edith Hope’s life begins to resemble the melodramatic plots of her own novels, her friends banish her to Switzerland, where they hope the luxurious calm of the Hotel du Lac will restore her to her senses. But instead of contritely contemplating her mistakes, Edith spends her time keenly observing her eccentric fellow guests and writing unsent letters to the married lover she is supposed to be trying to forget. Before long, despite her determination to stay quietly on the sidelines, Edith attracts the attention of a worldly man who believes that they are uniquely situated to solve each other’s problems. Beautifully observed and witheringly funny, Hotel du Lac is Brookner at her most stylish and potently subversive.