Jewish Booker Prize-winning novelist Anita Brookner dies at age 87

LONDON - Anita Brookner, a Booker Prize-winning novelist who explored the emotional undercurrents of quiet lives, has died at 87.

A death notice in Tuesday's edition of The Times newspaper said Brookner died peacefully in her sleep on Thursday.

Born in London in 1928, the only child of Polish Jewish parents, Brookner began her career as an art historian -- specializing in French art -- and was the first woman to be named Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University.

She published her first novel, "A Start in Life," when she was in her early 50s and went on to write some 25 works of fiction. She won the Booker Prize, Britain's leading literary award, in 1984 for "Hotel Du Lac," the story of an isolated writer adrift on the shore of Lake Geneva. It was later adapted into a BBC television miniseries.