Part fiction, part travelogue, the narrator of this compelling masterpiece pursues his solitary, eccentric course from England to Italy and beyond, succumbing to the vertiginous unreliability of memory itself. What could possibly connect Stendhal’s unrequited love, the artistry of Pisanello, a series of murders by a clandestine organisation, a missing passport, Casanova, the suicide of a dinner companion, stale apple cake, the Great Fire of London, a story by Kafka about a doomed huntsman and a closed-down pizzeria in Verona?

'Seated at a cafe table, in the syrupy warmth of out-of-season Nice, he reviewed his life and found it to be alarmingly empty.'George Bland had planned to spend his retirement in leisurely travel and modest entertainment with his friend Putnam. When Putnam dies George is left attempting to impose some purpose on the solitary end of his life. Then Katy Gibb appears as a temporary resident, perhaps even squatter, in a neighbouring apartment. Greedy, selfish, sometimes alluring, often manipulative, Katy exerts a strange influence on George, forcing him to recognize that his own careful, fastidious life has shown a distinct lack of passion and daring. As the realization takes hold, George must decide how much - or how little - he can do to transform the status quo.

Elizabeth and Betsy started school together on the same day. They became friends, Many years later they still meet - different lives and loves, different choices have marked them. Elizabeth, married to the safe, older Digby is relieving the boredom of a cosy but childless marriage with an affair. Betsy seems to have found real romance in Paris. Are their lives taking off, or are they just making more of the wrong choices without even realising it?

AT TWENTY-NINE, CLAIRE PITT is single but not an innocent. Attracted to Martin Gibson, a former academic married to a beautiful, manipulative invalid, she and her friend Wiggy are drawn deeper into his world. When Martin is widowed, Claire sees a possible future for herself and begins to make plans. But Martin is both more and less than he appears, as Claire is about to discover for herself.

Emma Roberts leaves home for the first time in her twenties, travelling to Paris to study seventeenth-century garden design. There, she meets vivacious Francoise Desnoyers and is quickly drawn into her passionate and complicated world. But Francoise's demands - deceiving her formidable mother over a love affair - leaves Emma feeling exposed and vulnerable, and yearning for the safety and comfort of her London home. Yet when an unexpected family tragedy turns that life upside down, Emma comes to realize the impossibility of returning to a home you have already left behind.

'She hoped one day to find the image she unconsciously sought, without knowing why she sought it, something to lift the spirits, to transport her on an imaginary journey, to give a hint of the transcendence which was so blatantly lacking in her everyday life of words and paper'Sisters Beatrice and Miriam have each other, but they were never close. Beatrice is a pianist, a romantic, while Miriam is disillusioned after a failed marriage. Living together yet failing to confide in one another, each is haunted by the mistakes they have made and the opportunities squandered.Both know that one day they will be forced to part, that they will each fall alone. So when Beatrice contemplates a future with Max, Miriam wonders whether the time has come sooner than she believed . . .

Dorothea May, som er i 70 årene, lever et stille og ensomt liv. Etter at mannen hennes døde femten år tidligere, har hun bare kontakt med mannens kusine og hennes ektefelle. Hun har ingenting å gjøre eller noe å bekymre seg over, utenom å planlegge augustferien og å tenke på helsen. Da kusinens datterdatter kommer til London for å gifte seg, blir verden snudd på hodet.

'It was at Millie's party, on that Friday evening, that she met her second husband, my stepfather-to-be, and thus changed both our lives . . .'Zoe is delighted when her widowed mother marries Simon, a generous older man who owns a villa in Nice. However, the long enchanted visits to France she enjoys come to an abrupt end when Simon suffers a bad fall. Zoe and her mother, finding themselves surrounded by well-meaning strangers, must learn how and how not to trust appearances . . . 'One of her very best - possibly her finest . . . reverberates long after it's put down ... Brookner in all her wisdom, eloquence and power' Spectator

Roman om Elizabeth og Betsy som har vært skolekamerater i London på 1950-tallet. Etter skolen skilles deres veier og de treffes først igjen når de er godt voksne. Elizabeth har giftet seg med den snille men kjedelige Digby, mens Betsy fortsatt søker etter kjærlighet og tilhørighet. Forfatteren skriver observant om vennskapsbånd som settes på prøve av fremmedgjøring og sjalusi

'Once a thing is known it can never be unknown.'By day Frances Hinton works in a medical library, by night she haunts the room of a West London mansion flat. Everything changes, however, when she is adopted by charming Nick and his dazzling wife Alix. They draw her into their tight circle of friends. Suddenly, Frances' life is full and ripe with new engagements. But too late, Frances realises that she may be only a play thing, to be picked up and discarded once used. And that just one act in defiance of Alix's wishes could see her lose everything . . .

'Sofka gazes ahead, with her family's future before her . . .'Sofka Dorn, widowed matriarch of a prosperous German Jewish family living in England, rules her four children with an exacting hand. Frederick, the eldest son, is a disgracefully charming 'ladies' man, and like his flirtatious sister, Betty, is adored and indulged by his mother. Alfred and Mimi, both steady and solitary, are a disappointment to Sofka, who values strength and boldness of spirit. But, as their story unfolds, it becomes clear that the lives each must live and the times each must endure will change them in ways even Sofka could never have imagined.

Anita Brookner's first novel, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.'Ruth Weiss, an academic, is beautiful, intelligent and lonely. Studying the heroines of Balzac in order to discover where her own childhood and adult life has gone awry, she seeks not salvation but enlightenment.Yet in revisiting her London upbringing, her friendships and doomed Parisian love affairs, she wonders if perhaps there might not be a chance for a new start in life . . .

Kitty Maule wants to be 'totally unreasonable, totally unfair, very demanding, and very beautiful.'Instead, she is clever, hesitant and too patient for her own good. For years, she has been in love with her colleague Maurice Bishop, a charming English lecturer who seems not to notice her feelings. But when there comes a chance to accompany Maurice to France on a study of French cathedrals, Kitty sees an opporunity to be the woman she has always wanted to be as well as at last make the man she wants fall in love with her. But why is that the closer she gets to Maurice, the more elusive he seems to become?

Beskjedne, pålitelige George Bland har hele sitt liv gjort det som forventes av ham. Nå venter pensjonisttilværelsen, og mulighetene til å "få noe ut av livet" synes fjernere enn noen gang da unge Katy Gibb invaderer livet hans og tilbyr ham en siste sjanse til å gi all diskresjon og ansvarlighet på båten.

En livshistorie hver kvinnelige leser vil kjenne seg igjen i. Julia mestrer kunsten å kue og utnytte dem som står henne nær, og Fay, som har oppgitt en beskjeden kunstnerkarriere for ekteskapets skyld, lar seg - til et visst punkt - utnytte. Så etter et livslangt vennskap samler hun seg til en siste heroisk handling.

Oversatt av Mette C. Jahr. Romanen om to menn og deres livslange vennskap, to "flyktninger" i enhver forstand av ordet. Anita Brookner vant den store engelske Booker-prisen med Hotel du Lac (norsk utg. 1986) Hun fremstår i dag som en av samtidens fineste engelske romanforfattere.