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Irish novelist John Banville was born in Wexford in Ireland in 1945. He
was educated at a Christian Brothers' school and St Peter's College in
Wexford. He worked for Aer Lingus in Dublin, an opportunity that enabled
him to travel widely. He was literary editor of the Irish Times between
1988 and 1999. Long Lankin, a collection of short stories, was published
in 1970. It was followed by Nightspawn (1971) and Birchwood (1973), both
novels.
Banville's fictional portrait of the 15th-century Polish astronomer Dr
Copernicus (1976) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction)
and was the first in a series of books exploring the lives of eminent
scientists and scientific ideas. The second novel in the series was about
the 16th-century German astronomer Kepler (1981) and won the Guardian
Fiction Prize. The Newton Letter: An Interlude (1982), is the story of an
academic writing a book about the mathematician Sir Isaac Newton. It was
adapted as a film by Channel 4 Television. Mefisto (1986), explores the
world of numbers in a reworking of Dr Faustus.
The Book of Evidence (1989), which won the Guinness Peat Aviation Book
Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction, Ghosts (1993)
and Athena (1995) form a loose trilogy of novels narrated by Freddie
Montgomery, a convicted murderer. The central character of Banville's 1997
novel, The Untouchable, Victor Maskell, is based on the art historian and
spy Anthony Blunt. Eclipse (2000), is narrated by Alexander Cleave, an
actor who has withdrawn to the house where he spent his childhood. Shroud
(2002), continues the tale begun in Eclipse and Prague Pictures: Portrait
of a City (2003), is a personal evocation of the magical European city.
John Banville lives in Dublin. His latest book The Sea (2005) won the
2005 Man Booker Prize. In The Sea an elderly art historian loses his wife
to cancer and feels compelled to revisit the seaside villa where he spent
childhood holidays.
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