Author John Banville in Conversation with Carlo Gébler

In a career spanning over 50 years, John Banville has not only established himself as a leading figure in Irish writing, but has also acquired a formidable international literary reputation.  He has written 20 novels, including The Sea which won the 2005 Man Booker Prize and The Book of Evidence which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989.  Other major achievements include The Franz Kafka Prize, The Irish Pen Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature and The Prince of Asturias Award, Spain’s most coveted literary prize.  John has been a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 2007 and in 2017 Italy made him a Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella d’Italie. Under the pen name Benjamin Black, he has also written a series of crime novels set in the 1950s about Dublin pathologist, Quirke.

John Banville will be joining us to discuss The Singularities, which was published in 2022.  In this novel, a number of characters from previous works are resurrected, including the murderer Freddie Montgomery from The Book of Evidence and the Godley family from The Infinities. Amongst other themes it has been described as being preoccupied with art, cosmology, the existence of ancient gods, extreme violence, sex, self-knowledge and self-delusion.  One critic describes it as gorgeously written and superbly choreographed while The New York Times referred to it as a triumphant piece of writing.