Strangers
Will be published approx. on 25. June 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
224 pages
978-0-241-82887-8 (ISBN)
Description
'No one writes with more skill and honesty about the human condition and this book is possibly her finest' Observer
THE MESMERISING FINAL NOVEL BY THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF HOTEL DU LAC, NOW WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY TESSA HADLEY
'He was haunted by a feeling of invisibility, as if he were a mere spectator of his own life, with no one to identify him in the barren circumstances of the here and now'
Paul Sturgis - unmarried, retired, and coming towards the end of his life - lives alone in a small dark flat which has never felt like home. Each day, he walks the streets of London, passing brightly lit windows into other people's lives and finding pleasure in fleeting exchanges with strangers: the cheerful hairdresser, the lady at the drycleaners, a cafe stop for a cup of coffee. When he longs for light and warmth, he takes short trips to the continent, but it is to London that he always returns.
Fearing that his destiny may be to live and die among strangers, and longing for companionship or simply conversation, Paul finds himself drawn back to memories of his own failed relationships. But when a chance encounter with a recently divorced younger woman shakes up his routine, and an old girlfriend appears on the scene, he is forced to make a decision about how - and with whom - he wants to spend the rest of his days.
'A novel of sober brilliance, and the unerring, unflinching Brookner is still a much underestimated novelist' Helen Dunmore, The Times
'Nothing less than brilliant, often highly amusing and, ultimately life affirming' Sunday Telegraph
THE MESMERISING FINAL NOVEL BY THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF HOTEL DU LAC, NOW WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY TESSA HADLEY
'He was haunted by a feeling of invisibility, as if he were a mere spectator of his own life, with no one to identify him in the barren circumstances of the here and now'
Paul Sturgis - unmarried, retired, and coming towards the end of his life - lives alone in a small dark flat which has never felt like home. Each day, he walks the streets of London, passing brightly lit windows into other people's lives and finding pleasure in fleeting exchanges with strangers: the cheerful hairdresser, the lady at the drycleaners, a cafe stop for a cup of coffee. When he longs for light and warmth, he takes short trips to the continent, but it is to London that he always returns.
Fearing that his destiny may be to live and die among strangers, and longing for companionship or simply conversation, Paul finds himself drawn back to memories of his own failed relationships. But when a chance encounter with a recently divorced younger woman shakes up his routine, and an old girlfriend appears on the scene, he is forced to make a decision about how - and with whom - he wants to spend the rest of his days.
'A novel of sober brilliance, and the unerring, unflinching Brookner is still a much underestimated novelist' Helen Dunmore, The Times
'Nothing less than brilliant, often highly amusing and, ultimately life affirming' Sunday Telegraph
Reviews / Votes
Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night * Hilary Mantel, praise for Anita Brookner * No one writes with more skill and honesty about the human condition and this book is possibly her finest * Observer * The beauty and precision of Brookner's writing is rightly praised each time she publishes a novel, but what is less often remarked on is her daring ... Like Graham Greene, she draws the reader into a world that has a character and signature all of its own ... Brookner's wry, dry lightness of touch creates a bloom on the darkness of her characters' sufferings ... Strangers is a novel of sober brilliance, and the unerring, unflinching Brookner is still a much underestimated novelist' * Helen Dunmore, The Times * Consistently absorbing ... In the hands of a lesser novelist, her stories of human frailty would be depressing, but she manages to make them sparkle with life - and always with hope * Daily Telegraph * Nothing less than brilliant, often highly amusing and, ultimately life affirming * Sunday Telegraph * A novel of great stylistic beauty and psychological truth ... The pitiless depiction of the final stages of life - and the refusal to allow her characters any consolation - makes Strangers as great a reflection on fear and regret as Philip Larkin's poem Aubade or Beckett's Endgame * Guardian * A brilliant and affecting creation by a writer whose empathy runs deep * Spectator * Strangers is, in its own way, definitive ... Brookner has given classic expression to what she sees to be a central truth of the human condition, absolute loneliness at the last ... Nothing less than a great horror story * Evening Standard * Anita Brookner is a distinguished and defiant writer whose books occupy a unique place in English literature. Her subject is the best one: the definition of human nature. Although her novels often convey the loneliness inherent in the human condition, they do so in such an acute and bold way that loneliness itself is shown to be a state as tempestuous and startling as any other sort of crisis. In Brookner's hands, in her descriptions so vivid and exact, it can be exhilarating ... Her books are unfailingly well written, they give voice and a sense of fierce entitlement to a sort of existence that might otherwise go unrecorded ... Brookner's is a literature that may be harsh but it is absolutely necessary * Independent *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
350 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-241-82887-8 (9780241828878)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Previous edition
Person
Anita Brookner was born in south London in 1928, the daughter of a Polish immigrant family. She trained as an art historian, and after holding a post as a professor at Cambridge University and spending several years in Paris, she worked at the Courtauld Institute of Art until her retirement in 1988. She published her first novel, A Start in Life, in 1981 and her twenty-fourth, Strangers, in 2009. In 1984, she won the Booker Prize for her novel Hotel du Lac. As well as fiction, Anita Brookner published a number of volumes of art criticism. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1990. She died in 2016 at the age of 87.