Sarah Bernstein

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Study for Obedience follows the story of a woman who moves from her birthplace to a remote northern country to serve as housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has recently left him. As the youngest child of many siblings—more than she cares to remember—she has spent her earliest years attending to their every need,...

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 A woman moves from the place of her birth to a remote northern country to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has just left him. The youngest child of many siblings—more than she cares to remember—from earliest childhood she has attended to their every desire, smoothing away the slightest discomfort with perfect obedience,...

After leaving the man with whom she'd been living, an unnamed protagonist in an unnamed university city is working unspectacularly on the poet Paul Celan. The abiding feeling in the city is one of paranoia; the weather has been deteriorating and outside her office window she can hear police helicopters circling, looking for the women who have been disappearing. She...