John Banville – författare

* Vinnare av Guinness Peat Aviation Award 1989 *»Farligt fulländad prosa.« | Don DeLillo»Mästerlig roman, vars poetiska kvaliteter, aristokratiska ironi och sinne för stor smärta påminner om Vladimir Nabokovs Lolita.« | Washington PostFreddie Montgomery är en före detta universitetslärare i statistik. Nu sitter han häktad i ett smutsigt fängelse i Dublin, misstänkt för mord. Fängelset har han börjat kalla för »hemma« och nu är han redo att berätta sin historia. Så följer den hisnande dokumentationen om en människa som undan för undan släpper spärrarna för en förtvivlan utan mått eller mål. Om hur han och hans fru Daphne, som länge levt över sina tillgångar, funnit på dumdristiga sätt att hantera sitt växande pengabehov. I en spiral av händelser hamnar Freddie i situationen där han kliver över gränsen till det värsta brottets avgrund.Läsarens problem blir till sist detsamma som domarens: Talar Freddie ens ett uns sanning?John Banvilles roman Motivet [The Book of Evidence, 1989] har jämförts med Vladimir Nabokov, Albert Camus och Fjodor Dostojevskij och räknas i dag till en av de stora brittiska romanklassikerna. I översättning av Eva Sjöstrand och med ett nyskrivet efterord av litteraturvetaren och John Banville-forskaren Joakim Wrethed.JOHN BANVILLE [f. 1945] är en irländsk författare, dramatiker och journalist. Belönad med priser såsom Booker Prize, Austrian State Prize for European Literature, Franz Kafka Prize, Prince of Asturias Award, Guinness Peat Aviation Award och Irish PEN Award.»Inte lättvindigt tar jag till jämförelser med böcker som Albert Camus Främlingen och Fjodor Dostojevskijs Brott & straff, men det är frestande efter att ha läst John Banvilles svindlande roman.« | Publishers Weekly»Som upphostad från helvetet.« | The New York Times Book Review

A SUNDAY TIMES AND TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR, SHORTLISTED FOR THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2025FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SNOW AND THE SEAEverything was a puzzle, everything a trap set to mystify and hinder me. . .Winter 1899, and strange things are afoot. As the new century approaches, English hack writer Evelyn Dolman marries Laura Rensselaer, the daughter of a wealthy American plutocrat. But in the midst of a rift between Laura and her father, Evelyn's plans for a substantial inheritance look to be dashed.Arriving in Venice for their belated honeymoon at Palazzo Dioscuri - the ancestral home of the charming but treacherous Count Barbarigo - the couple are met by a series of seeminglyotherworldly occurrences, which exacerbate Evelyn's already frayed nerves. Is it just the sea mist blanketing the floating city, or is he really losing his mind?'A marvellous and rewarding novelist . . . He is a magician, really.' THE SCOTSMAN'Banville has a grim gift of seeing people's souls.' DON DeLILLO'The most eminent innovator in Irish fiction of the last 50 years.' IRISH TIMES'One of my favourite writers alive.' REBECCA F. KUANG'Banville writes prose of such luscious elegance.' NEW YORK TIMES

'This novel is essence of Banville ... a career summation' Daily TelegraphFelix Mordaunt, recently released from prison, steps from a flashy red sports car onto the estate of his youth. But there is a new family living in the drafty old house: descendants of the late, world-famous scientist Adam Godley. Felix must now vie with the idiosyncratic Godley family, with their harried housekeeper who becomes his landlady, with the recently commissioned biographer of Godley Sr., and with a wealthy and beautiful woman from his past who comes bearing an unusual request...

A SUNDAY TIMES AND TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR, SHORTLISTED FOR THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2025FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SNOW AND THE SEAEverything was a puzzle, everything a trap set to mystify and hinder me. . .Winter 1899, and strange things are afoot. As the new century approaches, English hack writer Evelyn Dolman marries Laura Rensselaer, the daughter of a wealthy American plutocrat. But in the midst of a rift between Laura and her father, Evelyn's plans for a substantial inheritance look to be dashed.Arriving in Venice for their belated honeymoon at Palazzo Dioscuri - the ancestral home of the charming but treacherous Count Barbarigo - the couple are met by a series of seeminglyotherworldly occurrences, which exacerbate Evelyn's already frayed nerves. Is it just the sea mist blanketing the floating city, or is he really losing his mind?'A marvellous and rewarding novelist . . . He is a magician, really.' THE SCOTSMAN'Banville has a grim gift of seeing people's souls.' DON DeLILLO'The most eminent innovator in Irish fiction of the last 50 years.' IRISH TIMES'One of my favourite writers alive.' REBECCA F. KUANG'Banville writes prose of such luscious elegance.' NEW YORK TIMES

From John Banville, one of the world's greatest writers, comes The Blue Guitar, a story of theft and the betrayal of friendship.Adultery is always put in terms of thieving. But we were happy together, simply happy.Oliver Orme used to be a painter, well known and well rewarded, but the muse has deserted him. He is also, as he confesses, a petty thief; he does not steal for gain, but for the thrill of it. HIs worst theft is Polly, the wife of his friend Marcus, with whom he has had an affair. When the affair is discovered, Oliver hides himself away in his childhood home. From here he tells the story of a year, from one autumn to the next. Many surprises and shocks await him, and by the end of his story, he will be forced to face himself and seek a road towards redemption.Shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2016

From John Banville, one of the world's greatest writers, comes The Blue Guitar, a story of theft and the betrayal of friendship.Adultery is always put in terms of thieving. But we were happy together, simply happy.Oliver Orme used to be a painter, well known and well rewarded, but the muse has deserted him. He is also, as he confesses, a petty thief; he does not steal for gain, but for the thrill of it. HIs worst theft is Polly, the wife of his friend Marcus, with whom he has had an affair. When the affair is discovered, Oliver hides himself away in his childhood home. From here he tells the story of a year, from one autumn to the next. Many surprises and shocks await him, and by the end of his story, he will be forced to face himself and seek a road towards redemption.Shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2016Praise for Ancient Light:'Everything I want from a love story: sexy, convincing, baffling, funny, sad and unforgettable' Evening Standard, Books of the Year'Illuminating, funny, devastating. A meditation of breathtaking beauty and profundity on love and loss and death' Financial Times

A MASTERFUL TALE OF BETRAYAL AND CORRUPTION BY THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE SEA'Banville is one of the writers I admire the most' Hanya Yanahigara, author of A Little Life 'A brilliant feat of literary ventriloquism' The Times Having fled Rome and a stultifying marriage, Isabel Osmond is in London, brooding on the recent disclosure of her husband's shocking, years-long betrayal of her. What should she do now, and which way should she turn, in the emotional labyrinth where she has been trapped for so long? Reawakened by grief and the knowledge of having been grievously wronged, she determines to resume her youthful quest for freedom and independence. Soon Isabel must return to Italy and confront her husband, and seek to break his powerful hold on her. But will she succeed in outwitting him, and securing her revenge?Mrs Osmond is a masterly novel of betrayal, corruption and moral ambiguity, from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea. 'A worthy sequel ... His book is not only an impressive recreation of James's atmospheres and pacing, but also full of minor cliff-hangers and page-turning suspenses that keep you guessing' Observer'John Banville is one of the best novelists in English, and an expert ventriloquist, among other things ... Mrs Osmond is both a remarkable novel in its own right and a superb pastiche' Guardian 'John Banville is simply the finest writer at work today, a prolific prose stylist whose work has only deepened in quality throughout his career' John Boyne

A MASTERFUL TALE OF BETRAYAL AND CORRUPTION BY THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE SEA'Banville is one of the writers I admire the most' Hanya Yanahigara, author of A Little Life 'A brilliant feat of literary ventriloquism' The Times Having fled Rome and a stultifying marriage, Isabel Osmond is in London, brooding on the recent disclosure of her husband's shocking, years-long betrayal of her. What should she do now, and which way should she turn, in the emotional labyrinth where she has been trapped for so long? Reawakened by grief and the knowledge of having been grievously wronged, she determines to resume her youthful quest for freedom and independence. Soon Isabel must return to Italy and confront her husband, and seek to break his powerful hold on her. But will she succeed in outwitting him, and securing her revenge?Mrs Osmond is a masterly novel of betrayal, corruption and moral ambiguity, from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea. 'A worthy sequel ... His book is not only an impressive recreation of James's atmospheres and pacing, but also full of minor cliff-hangers and page-turning suspenses that keep you guessing' Observer'John Banville is one of the best novelists in English, and an expert ventriloquist, among other things ... Mrs Osmond is both a remarkable novel in its own right and a superb pastiche' Guardian 'John Banville is simply the finest writer at work today, a prolific prose stylist whose work has only deepened in quality throughout his career' John Boyne

'Billy Gray was my best friend and I fell in love with his mother.'Alexander Cleave, an actor who thinks his best days are behind him, remembers his first unlikely affair as a teenage boy in a small town in 1950s Ireland: the illicit meetings in a rundown cottage outside town; assignations in the back of his lover's car on sunny mornings and rain-soaked afternoons. And with these early memories comes something sharper and much darker - the more recent recollection of the actor's own daughter's suicide ten years before. Ancient Light is the story of a life rendered brilliantly vivid: the obsession and selfishness of young love and the terrifying shock of grief. It is a dazzling novel, funny, utterly pleasurable and devastatingly moving in the same moment.'Illuminating, funny, devastating. A meditation of breathtaking beauty and profundity on love and loss and death' Financial Times'Banville perfectly captures the spirit of adolescence. A luminous, breathtaking work' Independent on Sunday'Startlingly brilliant. Terrific - full of sadness and yearning' Sunday Telegraph

In this deeply moving and original book, John Banville alloys mystery, fable, and ghost story with poignant psychological acuity to forge the riveting story of a man wary of the future, plagued by the past, and so uncertain in the present that he cannot discern the spectral from the real.When renowned actor Alexander Cleave was a boy living in a large house with his widowed mother and various itinerant lodgers, he encountered a strikingly vivid ghost of his father. Now that he’s fifty and has returned to his boyhood home to recover from a nervous breakdown on stage, he is not surprised to find the place still haunted. He is surprised, however, at the presence of two new lodgers who have covertly settled into his old roost. And he is soon overwhelmed by how they, coupled with an onslaught of disturbing memories, compel him to confront the clutter that has become his life: ruined career, tenuous marriage, and troubled relationship with an estranged daughter destined for doom.From the Trade Paperback edition.

One part Nietzsche, one part Humbert Humbert, and a soupcon of Milton’s Lucifer, Axel Vander, the dizzyingly unreliable narrator of John Banville’s masterful new novel, is very old, recently widowed, and the bearer of a fearsome reputation as a literary dandy and bully. A product of the Old World, he is also an escapee from its conflagrations, with the wounds to prove it. And everything about him is a lie. Now those lies have been unraveled by a mysterious young woman whom Vander calls “Miss Nemesis.” They are to meet in Turin, a city best known for its enigmatic shroud. Is her purpose to destroy Vander or to save him—or simply to show him what lies beneath the shroud in which he has wrapped his life? A splendidly moving exploration of identity, duplicity, and desire, Shroud is Banville’s most rapturous performance to date.From the Trade Paperback edition.

One of the most dazzling and adventurous writers now working in English takes on the enigma of the Cambridge spies in a novel of exquisite menace, biting social comedy, and vertiginous moral complexity. The narrator is the elderly Victor Maskell, formerly of British intelligence, for many years art expert to the Queen. Now he has been unmasked as a Russian agent and subjected to a disgrace that is almost a kind of death. But at whose instigation?As Maskell retraces his tortuous path from his recruitment at Cambridge to the airless upper regions of the establishment, we discover a figure of manifold doubleness: Irishman and Englishman; husband, father, and lover of men; betrayer and dupe. Beautifully written, filled with convincing fictional portraits of Maskell''s co-conspirators, and vibrant with the mysteries of loyalty and identity, The Untouchable places John Banville in the select company of both Conrad and le Carre.Winner of the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction"Contemporary fiction gets no better than this... Banville''s books teem with life and humor." - Patrick McGrath, The New York Times Book Review"Victor Maskell is one of the great characters in recent fiction... The Untouchable is the best work of art in any medium on [its] subject." -Washington Post Book World"As remarkable a literary voice as any to come out of Ireland; Joyce and Beckett notwithstanding." -San Francisco ChronicleFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

On a languid midsummer’s day in the countryside, old Adam Godley, a renowned theoretical mathematician, is dying. His family gathers at his bedside: his son, young Adam, struggling to maintain his marriage to a radiantly beautiful actress; his nineteen-year-old daughter, Petra, filled with voices and visions as she waits for the inevitable; their mother, Ursula, whose relations with the Godley children are strained at best; and Petra’s “young man”—very likely more interested in the father than the daughter—who has arrived for a superbly ill-timed visit.But the Godley family is not alone in their vigil. Around them hovers a family of mischievous immortals—among them, Zeus, who has his eye on young Adam’s wife; Pan, who has taken the doughy, perspiring form of an old unwelcome acquaintance; and Hermes, who is the genial and omniscient narrator: “We too are petty and vindictive,” he tells us, “just like you, when we are put to it.” As old Adam’s days on earth run down, these unearthly beings start to stir up trouble, to sometimes wildly unintended effect. . . . Blissfully inventive and playful, rich in psychological insight and sensual detail, The Infinities is at once a gloriously earthy romp and a wise look at the terrible, wonderful plight of being human—a dazzling novel from one of the most widely admired and acclaimed writers at work today.From the Hardcover edition.

From the internationally acclaimed author of The Book of Evidence and Ghosts comes a mesmerizing novel that is both a literary thriller and a love story as sumptuously perverse as Lolita. "A strange and dreamlike book . . . Banville has a breathtaking style."--Boston Globe.

In this brilliantly haunting new novel, John Banville forges an unforgettable amalgam of enchantment and menace that suggests both The Tempest and his own acclaimed The Book of Evidence. "A surreal and exquisitely lyrical new novel by one of the great stylists writing in English today."--Boston Globe.

Told with lyrical prose, John Banville's Birchwood is the elegiac story of the aristocratic decline of an eccentric family riddled with dark secrets.Once the big house on an Irish estate, Birchwood has turned into a baroque madhouse for its ruined inhabitants. One disaster succeeds another, until young Gabriel Godkin runs away to join a travelling circus and look for his long-lost twin sister. Soon he discovers that famine and unrest stalk the countryside, and Ireland is ruined too.

The Sea is John Banville's remarkable, Booker prize-winning exploration of memory, childhood and loss.‘You can smell and feel and see his world with extraordinary clarity. It is a work of art, and I’ll bet it will still be read and admired in seventy-five years’ – The TimesWhen art historian Max Morden returns to the seaside village where he once spent a childhood holiday, he is both escaping from a recent loss and confronting a distant trauma.The Grace family had appeared that long-ago summer as if from another world. Mr and Mrs Grace, with their worldly ease and candour, were unlike any adults he had met before. But it was his contemporaries, the Grace twins Myles and Chloe, who most fascinated Max. He grew to know them intricately, even intimately. What happened next would haunt him for the rest of his years, and shape everything that was to follow.Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.

Inspired by the true story of Anthony Blunt and the Cambridge Five spy ring, The Untouchable is a beautifully crafted novel by John Banville, author of the Booker Prize-winning The Sea.Victor Maskell has been betrayed. After an announcement in the House of Commons and the hasty revelation of his double life of wartime espionage, his disgrace is public, his knighthood revoked, his position as curator of the Queen’s pictures terminated. There are questions to be answered. For whom has he been sacrificed? To what has he sacrificed his life?‘The Untouchable is an engrossing, exquisitely written and almost bewilderingly smart book . . . It’s the fullest book I’ve read in a very long time, utterly accomplished, thoroughly readable, written by a novelist of vast talent’ – Richard Ford, author of Independence DayNow part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

‘This is unequivocally a work of brilliance.’ Justin Cartwright, SpectatorOld Adam Godley’s time on earth is drawing to an end, and as his wife and children gather at the family home, little do they realize that they are not the only ones who have come to observe the spectacle.The mischievous Greek gods, too, have come; as tensions fray and desire bubbles over, their spying soon becomes intrusion becomes intervention, until the mortals’ lives – right before their eyes – seem to be changing faster than they can cope with.Overflowing with bawdy humour, John Banville has allowed his twinkling eye to rove through memories of the past and relationships of the present in this moving family drama. The Infinities is both a salacious delight and a penetrating exploration of the terrifying, wonderful, immutable plight of being human.

Ghosts opens with a shipwreck, leaving a party of sightseers temporarily marooned on an island. The stranded castaways make their way towards the refuge of the isle’s reclusive savant; but the big isolated house which is home to Professor Silas Kreutznaer and his laconic assistant, Licht, is also home to another, unnamed presence . . .Onto this seemingly haunted island, where a strange singing hangs in the air, John Banville drops a scrumptious cast of characters – including a murderer – and weaves a tale where the details are clear but the conclusion polymorphous – shifting appearances, transformations and thwarted assumptions make this world of uneasy calm utterly enthralling.‘As fascinating, complex, stimulating and energetic as any work of art . . . A work which proves Banville as a master, the artist in total control of his craft’ – The Times ‘John Banville’s funniest book . . . another triumph by our most outrageously inventive and daring novelist’ – The Sunday Independent‘Makes this astonishingly attractive novelist one of the most important writers now at work in English – a key thinker, in fact, in fiction’ – The London Review of BooksNow part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

'A nearly perfectly fashioned work of art' – Irish TimesThe third in his thematically-connected Revolutions Trilogy, The Newton Letter is an exceptional work of literature from John Banville, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea.A historian, on the brink of completing a book on Isaac Newton, rents a cottage in southern Ireland for the summer. As the summer wears on and he dissects Newton’s mental collapse of 1693 he becomes distracted by the mysterious occupants of Fern House and finds himself constructing their imagined histories to powerful effect. His elaborate attempts to decipher the complex web of relationships are, however, far from accurate . . .