Author
John Banville
Birth Date
December 8, 1945
(80 Years)
Associated Country
Ireland
Pseudonym
John Banville is an Irish novelist, literary critic, and screenwriter known for his richly stylized prose and philosophical exploration of memory, identity, and art. He was born in Wexford and began his career as a journalist before turning to fiction writing.
Banville has written numerous acclaimed novels, including The Book of Evidence (1989), The Sea (2005), which won the Booker Prize, and The Infinities (2009). He is also known for his crime fiction written under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, including the Quirke series.
His work is celebrated for its lyrical precision, intellectual depth, and exploration of human consciousness. Banville is widely regarded as one of the leading contemporary Irish writers, with a distinctive voice that bridges literary fiction and genre writing.
Banville has written numerous acclaimed novels, including The Book of Evidence (1989), The Sea (2005), which won the Booker Prize, and The Infinities (2009). He is also known for his crime fiction written under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, including the Quirke series.
His work is celebrated for its lyrical precision, intellectual depth, and exploration of human consciousness. Banville is widely regarded as one of the leading contemporary Irish writers, with a distinctive voice that bridges literary fiction and genre writing.
Books
The Newton Letter 2026
Revolutions, Book 3
In this compact literary gem, an historian retreats to a quiet cottage in rural Ireland to complete a biography of Isaac Newton. Why, he must unravel, did Newton suffer a mental collapse in 1693, and...
Even the Dead 2026
Quirke, Book 7
Perhaps Quirke has been down among the dead too long. Lately the Dublin pathologist has suffered hallucinations and blackouts, and he fears the cause is a brain tumor. A specialist diagnoses an old...
Holy Orders 2025
Quirke, Book 6
1950s Dublin. A battered body discovered floating in a canal is quickly identified as Jimmy Minor, an up-and-coming investigative journalist for the Clarion and a good friend to Phoebe, the daughter...
A Death in Summer 2025
Quirke, Book 4
On a sweltering summer afternoon, newspaper tycoon Richard Jewell―known to his many enemies as Diamond Dick―is discovered with his head blown off by a shotgun blast. But is it suicide or murder? For...
The Drowned 2025
Strafford and Quirke, Book 4
1950s, rural Ireland. A loner comes across a mysteriously empty car in a field, and soon finds himself embroiled in a troubling missing person case, as a husband claims his wife may have thrown...
Venetian Vespers 2025
1899. As the new century approaches, struggling English writer Evelyn Dolman—a hack, by his own description—marries Laura Rensselaer, daughter of an American oil tycoon. Evelyn anticipates that he and...
Elegy for April 2025
Quirke, Book 3
A junior doctor at a local hospital, April Latimer is a scandalous presence in the conservative and highly patriarchal society of 1950s Dublin: the independently-minded scion of a well-connected...
Christine Falls 2025
Quirke, Book 1
Quirke is a haunted, hard-drinking pathologist stumbling through the brooding gloom of 1950s Dublin. It is a society of secrets and meanness, dominated by a rigid hierarchy―as Quirke is reminded of...
The Silver Swan 2025
Quirke, Book 2
The inimitable Quirke returns in another spellbinding crime novel, in which a young woman's dubious suicide sets off a new string of hazards and deceptions Two years have passed since the events of...
The Lock-Up 2024
Strafford and Quirke, Book 3
In 1950s Dublin, Rosa Jacobs, a young history scholar, is found dead in her car. Renowned pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI St. John Strafford begin to investigate the death as a murder, but it’s the...
Birchwood 2024
Once the big house on an Irish estate, Birchwood has turned into a dilapidated family manor filled with memories and despair. One disaster succeeds another, until young Gabriel Godkin runs away to...
Doctor Copernicus 2024
Revolutions, Book 1
Sixteenth-century Europe is teeming with change and controversy: wars are being waged by princes and bishops and the repercussions of Luther are being felt through a convulsing Germany. In a remote...
Kepler 2024
Revolutions, Book 2
Johannes Kepler, born in 1571 in southern Germany, was one of the world’s greatest mathematicians and astronomers. The novel *Kepler* by John Banville brilliantly re-creates his life and his work,...
The Singularities 2023
A man with a borrowed name steps from a flashy red sports car—also borrowed—onto the estate of his youth. But all is not as it seems. There is a new family living in the drafty old house: the Godleys,...
April in Spain 2022
Strafford and Quirke, Book 2
On the idyllic coast of San Sebastian, Spain, Dublin pathologist Quirke is struggling to relax, despite the beaches, cafés and the company of his disarmingly lovely wife. When he glimpses a familiar...
Snow 2021
Strafford and Quirke, Book 1
Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been summoned to County Wexford to investigate a murder. A parish priest has been found dead in Ballyglass House, the family seat of the aristocratic,...
Mrs. Osmond 2018
What happens after the fairy tale ends? In Mrs Osmond, John Banville returns to the world of Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady, continuing the story of Isabel Archer after her disastrous marriage...
Time Pieces 2018
As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city, John Banville's "quasi-memoir" is as layered, emotionally rich, witty, and unexpected as any of his novels. Born...
The Blue Guitar 2016
Oliver Otway Orme—a man equally self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating—is a painter of some renown, and a petty thief who has never been caught ... until now. Unfortunately, the purloined possession...
Ancient Light 2013
Is there a difference between memory and invention? That is the question that haunts Alexander Cleave as he reflects on his first, and perhaps only, love—an underage affair with his best friend’s...
Long Lankin 2013
When Cora and her younger sister Mimi are sent to stay with their great-aunt in a remote English village, they quickly sense that something is wrong. The house is full of strange rules, the...
The Infinities 2011
On a languid midsummer’s day in the countryside, the Godley family gathers at the bedside of Adam, a renowned mathematician and their patriarch. But they are not alone in their vigil. Around them...
The Sea 2006
In this luminous novel, 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...
The Book of Evidence 2001
Freddie Montgomery is a highly cultured man, a husband and father living the life of a dissolute exile on a Mediterranean island. When a debt comes due and his wife and child are held as collateral,...
The Untouchable 1998
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...
Athena 1996
In a shadowy corner of the art world, a man with a troubled past is drawn into a mysterious and dangerous commission. Morrow, a self-styled art expert, is hired to authenticate a collection of...
Ghosts 1994
On a remote island, a group of travelers is shipwrecked and forced into uneasy proximity with its enigmatic inhabitants. Among them is a man haunted by his past, drawn into a world where time seems...