The Next Big Thing

(Paperback)

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Description

Longlisted for the 2002 Man Booker, and from the bestselling author of the Man Booker Prize-winning Hotel du Lac 'This would soon be a new day, all too closely resembling the others, the normal days of his present existence, in which nothing happened nor could be expected to happen' At seventy-three Herz is facing an increasingly bewildering world. He cannot see his place in it or even work out what to do with his final years. Questions and misunderstandings haunt Herz like old ghosts. Should he travel, sell his flat, or propose marriage to an old friend he has not seen in thirty years Herz believes that he must do something, only he doesn't know what this next big thing in life should be . . .

Reviews

Impressive. Beautifully written with flashes of charm and wisdom * Sunday Times *
Infinitely moving * Literary Review *
Beautifully written, it draws you in and holds you fast * Daily Mail *
Brookner has no rivals when it comes to anatomizing complex emotions. Without question, an exceptional piece of writing. * Sunday Telegraph *
Brookner is a brilliant writer, her prose near perfect, and she captures extremely poignantly the loneliness, the anxieties, the insecurity of old age. * Sunday Independent *
Brookner is a great novelist * Evening Standard *

Author Bio

Anita Brookner was born in south London in 1928, the daughter of a Polish immigrant family. She trained as an art historian, and 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. Hotel du Lac won the 1984 Booker Prize. As well as fiction, Anita Brookner has published a number of volumes of art criticism.