John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland in 1945. He is the author of many novels, including The Book of Evidence, The Untouchable, Eclipse, The Sea (winner of the Man Booker Prize), and Ancient Light. As Benjamin Black he has written six crime novels, including Vengeance.
Books
The Old Devils
Winner of the 1986 Booker Prize, and considered by his son Martin to be Kingsley Amis’s greatest achievement, The Old Devils is delightful proof that neither Amis nor his characters mellowed in old age. In fact, a placid life is just the thing that Amis denies his old devils, whose routines of nattering, complaining, and drinking, are thrown into chaos when an old friend and rival (now a successful writer) returns to town with a new and entrancing wife.
The Snows of Yesteryear
The author of Memoirs of an Anti-Semite tells his own story through portraits of the members of his childhood household. “An elegiac tribute to a receding past and a testament to the redemptive powers of memory—a family photography album, beautifully translated into words.—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Book Review
The Lord Chandos Letter and Other Writings
In Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s celebrated autobiographical novella a young nobleman reveals to his patron Sir Francis Bacon his particularly modern crisis of spirit.
Troubles
Troubles is a hilarious and heartbreaking work by a modern master of the historical novel.