Anita Brookner Knihy

Into the rarefied atmosphere of the Hotel du Lac timidly walks Edith Hope, romantic novelist and holder of modest dreams. Edith has refused to sacrifice her ideals and remains stubbornly single, until she meets Mr Neville.

Jean-Antoine Watteau (10. říjen 1684, Valenciennes – 18. červenec 1721, Nogent-sur-Marne) byl francouzský malíř, je považovaný za prvního z mistrů rokoka. Přesný den narození neznáme, 10. říjen 1684 je dnem křtu. Osobitá studie představuje znamenitého rokokového "malíře galantních slavností", oprošťuje obraz jeho života od legend a naznačuje, že jeho obvyklá charakteristika je jen dílčím zachycením neobyčejných schopností tohoto umělce, jejichž nápověď je patrna v jeho vrcholných a posledních pracích. K ní se druží výběr z kritických mínění jeho současníků i pozdějších spisovatelů a komentář k jednotlivým reprodukcím, který je zasvěceným průvodcem po historických i uměleckých souvislostech všech 6 černobílých a 45 barevných vyobrazení.

Combining two volumes of Wharton's short stories in a brand new edition, this outstanding selection is the most comprehensive available. Although Edith Wharton is best known for her novels The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, this extensive collection of her short fiction shows her to be a master of all its varieties. Wharton's stories ... owe their enduring power to portray the emotional consequences of life in a rarefied world."—The New York TimesThe Pelican --The Other Two --The Mission of Jane --The Reckoning --The Last Asset --The Letters --Autres Temps ... --The Long Run --After Holbein --Atrophy --Pomegranate Seed --Her Son --Charm Incorporated --All Souls' --The Lamp of Psyche --A Journey --The Line of Least Resistance --The Moving Finger --Expiation --Les Metteurs en Scene --Full Circle --The Daunt Diana --Afterward --The Bolted Door --The Temperate Zone --Diagnosis --The Day of the Funeral --Confession --

Hotel du Lac is a classic Booker Prize-winning novel by Anita Brookner. It follows Edith Hope, a romantic novelist, as she navigates life at the Hotel du Lac after being exiled from home. Amidst the elite, she encounters Mr. Neville, reigniting her hopes for love and escape from spinsterhood. The novel is praised for its humor, wit, and emotional depth.

Kitty Maule longs to be "totally unreasonable, totally unfair, very demanding, and very beautiful." She is instead clever, reticent, self-possessed, and striking. For years. Kitty has been tactfully courting her colleague Maurice Bishop, a detached, elegant English professor. Now, running out of patience, Kitty's amorous pursuit takes her from rancorous academic committee rooms and lecture halls to French cathedrals and Parisian rooming houses, from sittings with her dress-making grandmother to seances with a grandmotherly psychic. Touching, funny, and stylistically breathtaking, Providence is a brightly polished gem of romantic comedy.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Anna Durrant's acquaintances realize that Anna has gone missing. Normally so reliable, so helpful, she has neglected what duties remain to her after the death of her mother and taken flight. Lawrence Halliday, the family doctor, trapped in a trying marriage to the predatory Vickie, is the first to notice Anna's disappearance. Mrs Marsh, a critical friend of Anna's mother, had hoped that her arrogant son Nick might take an interest in Anna, but he is seeking greater sophistication and worldliness. And as for Anna herself, she has not so much disappeared as ceased to exist as the woman they all thought they knew.

Anita Brookner is justly famous for her elegant, almost Jamesian character studies of women poised on the threshold of life. But in Lewis Percy, she performs a remarkable leap of imaginative empathy in her portrayal of a man torn between the reassuring cloister of the library and the alluring but terrifying world of the senses, a world populated by women who persist in bewildering him.

Brookner again shows herself to be the consummate observer of social nuance in this deeply felt chronicle of an unlikely friendship between the flamboyant, ego-centric Julia and modest, self-effacing Fay, the narrator. Thrust together by their husbands' business partnership and by their sharing of a guilty secret, these two women form an intense and intimate bond that highlights their uneasy compromises with each other -- and with life itself.

A lonely art historian absorbed in her research seizes the opportunity to share in the joys and pleasures of the lives of a glittering couple, only to find her hopes of companionship and happiness shattered.

"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."