John Banville

The Untouchable is a 1997 novel by the Irish writer John Banville. The book is written as a roman à clef, presented from the point of view of the art historian, double agent and homosexual Victor Maskell—a character based largely on Cambridge spy Anthony Blunt and in part on Irish poet Louis MacNeice. The character of …

In this luminous new novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he …

The Newton Letter is a novel by John Banville, first published in 1982. It was published in the United States in 1987. Drawing comparisons with Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier and John Hawkes's The Blood Oranges for their use of the unreliable narrator, The Newton Letter was described there as Banville's "most …

Hugo von Hoffmannsthal made his mark as a poet, as a playwright, and as the librettist for Richard Strauss’s greatest operas, but he was no less accomplished as a writer of short, strangely evocative prose works. The atmospheric stories and sketches collected here—fin-de-siècle fairy tales from the Vienna of Klimt and …

The Infinities is a 2009 novel by the Irish writer John Banville.

The Book of Evidence is a 1989 novel by the Irish writer John Banville. The book is narrated by Freddie Montgomery, a 38-year-old scientist, who murders a servant girl during an attempt to steal a painting from a neighbour. Freddie is an aimless drifter, and though he is a perceptive observer of himself and his …