After the Seventies saw the Booker taking its tentative first steps, stumbling here and there, occasionally landing on a genuine classic but more often than not serving up curiosities rather than solid-gold genius, we venture into more solid ground in the Eighties.

There’s a sense here of more self-awareness, of the need for winners to feel “important” and make a statement of some kind. There are certainly more hits than misses, and even the latter are perhaps in some ways more interesting than those of the previous decade.

Edith Hope, a moderately successful romance novelist, arrives at the Hotel du Lac, on the shores of Lake Geneva, where she has been “banished” by friends for a misdemeanor which is for large parts of the novel unclear. She begins her stay refusing to change, intending to keep a distance from the small number of fellow guests and work on her latest novel. As the novel progresses, however, she begins to engage with the other guests and reflect on her life.