Anita Brookner was a British novelist, art historian, and lecturer. She was born in London in 1928 and wrote 24 novels during her lifetime. Her works often focused on the themes of loneliness and isolation, and she won the Booker Prize in 1984 for her novel Hotel du Lac. Brookner was also a respected art historian, having written several books on the subject. She died in 2016 at the age of 87.