"Understanding Anita Brookner examines the undeniably bleak view of the world in Brookner's fiction and the solitary protagonists whose "faith in a better world" is both their tragedy and their beauty. Cheryl Alexander Malcolm acquaints the reader with Brookner's distinguished career (first as an eminent art critic and historian, then as a writer), critical acclaim and awards, London birth and lifelong residence, and Polish Jewish family background.

She examines the limited range of literary forms with which Brookner, abjuring the postmodern devices of jumbled chronologies and multiple narrators, contents herself. She illustrates Brookner's recurrent point of view, characterized by traditional British cultural values - understatement, deference to authority, and acceptance of a class system."--BOOK JACKET.