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The Rules of Engagement
  • Published: 1 November 2004
  • ISBN: 9780141910222
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

The Rules of Engagement



The twenty second novel by Booker Prize winning author of Hotel du Lac Anita Brookner.

The Rules of Engagement is the twenty second novel by Booker Prize winning author of Hotel du Lac Anita Brookner.

Elizabeth and Betsy are old school friends. Born in 1948 and unready for the sixties, they had high hopes of the lives they would lead, even though their circumstances were so different.

When they meet again in their thirties, 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?

  • Published: 1 November 2004
  • ISBN: 9780141910222
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

About the author

Anita Brookner

Date: 2013-08-06
Anita Brookner, who is an international authority on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century painting, teaches at the Courtauld Institute of Art. In 1968 she was Slade Professor at Cambridge, the first woman ever to hold this position. She is the author of Watteau, The Genius of the Future; Greuze; Jacques-Louis David; and three other novels, A Start in Life, Providence and Look at Me.

Anita Brookner was born in London and, apart from several years in Paris, has lived there ever since. She trained as an art historian and taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art until 1988. Leaving Home is her twenty-third novel.

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Praise for The Rules of Engagement

Elegant, utterly persuasive . . . Brookner resembles no other novelist writing today

Scotsman

Splendid, melancholy . . . an unflinching examination of the manouevres of the heart. Brookner writes mesmerisingly well

Spectator

One of the most observant moralists writing today. A dark, wintry work and there is plenty here to satisfy Brookner's fans

Guardian