John Banville, the Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Sea and Ancient Light, now gives us a new novel—at once trenchant, witty, and shattering—about the intricacies of artistic creation, about theft, and about the ways in which we learn to possess one another, and to hold on to ourselves.
Equally self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating, our narrator, Oliver Otway Orme (“O O O. An absurdity. You could hang me over the door of a pawnshop”), is a painter of some renown and a petty thief who has never before been caught and steals only for pleasure. Both art and the art of thievery have been part of his “endless effort at possession,” but now he’s pushing fifty, feels like a hundred, and things have not been going so well. Having recognized the “man-killing crevasse” that exists between what he sees and any representation he might make of it, he has stopped painting. And his last act of thievery—the last time he felt its “secret shiver of bliss”—has been discovered. The fact that the purloined possession was the wife of the man who was, perhaps, his best friend has compelled him to run away—from his mistress, his home, his wife; from whatever remains of his impulse to paint; and from a tragedy that has long haunted him—and to sequester himself in the house where he was born. Trying to uncover in himself the answer to how and why things have turned out as they have, excavating memories of family, of places he has called home, and of the way he has apprehended the world around him (“one of my eyes is forever turning towards the world beyond”), Olly reveals the very essence of a man who, in some way, has always been waiting to be rescued from himself.

'Fable, intellectual thriller, Gothic extravaganza, symbolist conundrum ...a true work of art' Sunday Independent Is there a numerical solution to the quest for the meaning of life? A brilliant reworking of the classic Dr Faustus theme, Mefisto focuses on the mathematically gifted Gabriel Swan, who seeks a numerical solution to his quest for order and meaning in life. 'Mefisto renders all superlatives woefully inadequate ...Undisputed master of language, the laconic pause and the blackly comic, Banville is a supreme stylist ...He is a magician ...Another expectedly astonishing and very daring display from this richly, almost wickedly, gifted artist' Time Out 'An excellent novel, beautifully written. The sort of thing you have to read more than once wonderful stuff' Punch 'Few writers in Ireland today can arouse such expectation by the advent of a new novel ...A profound beauty of words displayed by their lover ...Banville's great enterprise does not falter ...read Mefisto straight through; it deserves it' Irish Times

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.

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 Chronicle

A brilliant, engaging and highly literate espionage-cum-existential novel, John Banville's The Untouchable concerns the suddenly-exposed double agent Victor Maskell, a character based on the real Cambridge intellectual elites who famously spied on the United Kingdom in the middle of the 20th century. But Maskell--scholar, adventurer, soldier, art curator and more--respected and still living in England well past his retirement from espionage, looked like he was going to get away with it when unexpectedly, in his 70s and sick with cancer, he is unmasked. The question of why, and by whom assumes less importance for Maskell than the soul-searching questions of who, ultimately, he really is, why he spied in the first place, and whether his many-faceted existence adds up to an authentic life.

From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea and Ancient Light, a new novel--at once trenchant, witty, and shattering--about the intricacies of artistic creation and theft, and about the ways in which we learn to possess one another, and to hold on to ourselves.
Equally self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating, our narrator, Oliver Otway Orme, is a painter of some renown, and a petty thief who does not steal for profit and has never before been caught. But he's pushing fifty, feels like a hundred, and things have not been going so well lately. Having recognized the "man-killing crevasse" that exists between what he sees and any representation he might make of it--any attempt to make what he sees his own--he's stopped painting. And his last purloined possession--aquired the last time he felt the "secret shiver of bliss" in thievery--has been discovered. The fact that it was the wife of the man who was, perhaps, his best friend, has compelled him to run away: from his mistress, his home, his wife, from whatever remains of his impulse to paint and from the tragedy that haunts him, and to sequester himself in the house where he was born, trying to uncover in himself the answer to how and why things have turned out as they did. Excavating memories of family, of places he's called home, and of the way he has apprehended the world around him ("no matter what else is going on, one of my eyes is always swivelling towards the world beyond"), Ollie reveals the very essence of a man who, in some way, has always been waiting to be rescued from himself.

A brilliant, engaging and highly literate espionage-cum-existential novel, John Banville's The Untouchable concerns the suddenly-exposed double agent Victor Maskell, a character based on the real Cambridge intellectual elites who famously spied on the United Kingdom in the middle of the 20th century. But Maskell--scholar, adventurer, soldier, art curator and more--respected and still living in England well past his retirement from espionage, looked like he was going to get away with it when unexpectedly, in his 70s and sick with cancer, he is unmasked. The question of why, and by whom assumes less importance for Maskell than the soul-searching questions of who, ultimately, he really is, why he spied in the first place, and whether his many-faceted existence adds up to an authentic life.

Review
“This is one of the most startling of the century's varied achievements in Irish writing.”
—Seamus Deane
"John Banville is one of the greatest masters of the English language.”
—The Scotsman
"Birchwood represents a watershed in contemporary Irish writing..”
—Colm Toibin
Product Description
An early classic from the Man Booker-prize winning author of The Sea.
I am therefore I think. So starts John Banville’s 1973 novel Birchwood, a novel that centers around Gabriel Godkin and his return to his dilapidated family estate. After years away, Gabriel returns to a house filled with memories and despair. Delving deep into family secrets—a cold father, a tortured mother, an insane grandmother—Gabriel also recalls his first encounters with love and loss. At once a novel of a family, of isolation, and of a blighted Ireland, Birchwood is a remarkable and complex story about the end of innocence for one boy and his country, told in the brilliantly styled prose of one of our most essential writers.

媒體推薦
人類無法逃脫他必須承受的命運安排，Max Morden在生命中的十字路口，他必須把他混亂生活理出個頭緒，他罹患癌症的太太剛剛過世，他想逃離現實生活中面對的失落，卻回到當年受到創傷的所在。他回到的他還是小男孩時生活的海邊小鎮，他記得當時Grace家庭的雙胞胎Myles與Chloe。不過在Max Morden試著重新在此地展開新生活的同時，卻又陷入與雙胞胎的奇怪關係。John Banville以《The Sea》以一位年過五旬的中年男子的心態，討論懷鄉的渴望與對於記憶的冥思，討論人面對的死亡與記憶，Banville優美的文字與嚴謹的風格架構讓該書在傳媒界一致認為是文字藝術的臻品，《The Sea》入圍了今年的英國布克獎，可說是呼聲相當高的一部作品。
【94年11月好讀推薦】二○○五年布克獎得主 John Banville，儘管在初審時擊退伊恩．麥可尤恩（Ian McEwan）、柯慈（J. M. Coetzee）、魯西迪（Salman Rushdie），決選時打敗朱力安．巴恩斯（Julian Barnes）、石黑一雄和札迪．史密斯（Zadie Smith），在英國文壇的知名度卻出奇地低。出生於愛爾蘭的Banville，共出版過十四部小說，無一不以「難讀」著稱，獲獎作品The Sea，描寫主人翁喪妻後重遊故地，全書幾無對白，情節亦少起伏，盡由細節繁複的意識流獨白構成，對一般讀者來說，閱讀門檻頗高。由於近年布克獎傾向鼓勵對大眾讀者較「友善」的書寫，該書獲獎後益發受到爭議。針對媒體書評關乎該書「語言拗口」、「內容晦澀」的批評，評審團主席John Sutherland為Banville辯護道：「人生不正是這般抑鬱、難纏？」以下節譯該書第一章，供欲一探究竟之讀者先讀為快。
■精采內文試閱【The Sea節譯】
方才有人踏過我的墳墓，有個人……
我在這裡的那許多年以前，眾神仍與人同在的日子，名叫「西達」的老房子是棟避暑小屋，一次出租兩個星期或一個月。每年六月，一個有錢的醫生跟他粗聲粗氣的一大家子會在這裡出沒──我們不喜歡他家大嗓門的小孩，他們衝我們笑，又自攻不破的大門柵欄後面向我們丟石頭。在他們之後，是一對神祕的中年夫妻，他倆不跟人攀談，每日清晨同一時間陰沉著臉帶他家臘腸狗出門，無聲無息沿車站路走到河邊。在我們看來，八月的「西達」老屋最有意思。這時節的房客年年不同：有從英國或歐洲來的旅客，有我們老想偷窺的滑稽蜜月夫妻，有一回，甚至來了一隊裝備齊全的巡迴劇團，在小鎮簡陋的戲院裡演了一台午場戲。然後，那年，葛斯一家出現。
我第一眼看見的，是他家的車；泊在大門內的碎石地上。低底盤、刮痕累累、坑坑疤疤的黑色車款，內裝灰棕色皮椅墊，和一輪亮晶晶的木質方向盤。封面磨損還帶折痕的書，隨意灑在「西達」斜度挺時髦的後窗底下，一台書架上。還有一幅法國旅遊地圖，已翻得破破爛爛了。屋子前門大開，我聽得見屋內的聲響，從樓下傳來；樓上，有赤腳跑過樓板的聲音，和一個女孩的笑。我在大門邊停住，幾乎是在偷聽；倏地，一個男人手端著酒跑了出來……他把無握把酒杯──青藍色烈酒、冰塊、一塊檸檬片──以危險的角度放在車頂上，打開前座車門，彎身入內，在儀表版下東翻西找。看不見的樓上，女孩又笑了一遍，發出一聲狂亂、顫抖、佯裝受驚嚇的尖叫，之後，仍是疾行的腳步聲……男人轉身進屋的時候與我四目相對，對我眨了一下眼，那不是一般大人促狹帶諂媚的眨法，而是一種志同道合、帶有共謀意味的表示，近乎祕密結謀，彷彿，我與他，兩個陌生人，一個大人和一個小孩，共同經歷的這一時刻，儘管看似無足輕重，甚至毫無內容，卻饒富深意……
這，便是我與葛斯一家的初次相遇……
過去，在我心中跳動，彷若第二顆心。

For the young John Banville, Dublin was a place of enchantment and yearning. Each year, on his birthday - the 8th of December, Feast of the Immaculate Conception - he and his mother would journey by train to the capital city, passing frosted pink fields at dawn, to arrive at Westland Row and the beginning of a day's adventures that included much-anticipated trips to Clery's and the Palm Beach ice-cream parlour.
The aspiring writer first came to live in the city when he was eighteen. In a once grand but now dilapidated flat in Upper Mount Street, he wrote and dreamed and hoped.
It was a cold time, for society and for the individual - one the writer would later explore through the famed Benjamin Black protagonist Quirke - but underneath the seeming permafrost a thaw was setting in, and Ireland was beginning to change.
Alternating between vignettes of Banville's own past, and present-day historical explorations of the city, Time Pieces is a vivid evocation of childhood and memory - that 'bright abyss' in which 'time's alchemy works' - and a tender and powerful ode to a formative time and place for the artist as a young man.
Accompanied by images of the city by photographer Paul Joyce.

'This is unequivocally a work of brilliance.' Justin Cartwright, Spectator Old 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, 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. 'A poetic vision of boundless possibility.' Literary Review 'Full of dark humour and written with a deft eye for detail.' GQ 'This darkly comic and fearsomely clever creation is a heady delight' Metro 'Written in such saturatedly beautiful, luminous prose that every page delights, startles and uplifts.' The Times

Hugo von Hoffmannsthal made his mark as a poet, as a playwright, and as the librettist for Richard Strauss’s greatest operas, but he was no less accomplished as a writer of short, strangely evocative prose works. The atmospheric stories and sketches collected here—fin-de-siècle fairy tales from the Vienna of Klimt and Freud, a number of them never before translated into English—propel the reader into a shadowy world of uncanny fates and secret desires. An aristocrat from Paris in the plague years shares a single night of passion with an unknown woman; a cavalry sergeant meets his double on the battlefield; an orphaned man withdraws from the world with his four servants, each of whom has a mysterious power over his destiny.
The most influential of all of Hofmannsthal's writings is the title story, a fictional letter to the English philosopher Francis Bacon in which Lord Chandos explains why he is no longer able to write. The "Letter" not only symbolized Hofmannsthal's own turn away from poetry, it captured the psychological crisis of faith and language which was to define the twentieth century.

In this luminous novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory, 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 loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel among the finest we have had from this masterful writer."

Incandescent prose. Beautifully textured characterisation. Transparent narratives. The adjectives to describe the writing of John Banville are all affirmative, and The Sea is a ringing affirmation of all his best qualities. His publishers are claiming that this novel by the Booker-shortlisted author is his finest yet, and while that claim may have an element of hyperbole, there is no denying that this perfectly balanced book is among the writer’s most accomplished work.
Max Morden has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with several disturbing things. A recent loss is still taking its toll on him, and a trauma in his past is similarly proving hard to deal with. He decides that he will return to a town on the coast at which he spent a memorable holiday when a boy. His memory of that time devolves on the charismatic Grace family, particularly the seductive twins Myles and Chloe. In a very short time, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with them, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life. But will he be able to exorcise those memories of the past?
The fashion in which John Banville draws the reader into this hypnotic and disturbing world is non pareil, and the very complex relationships between his brilliantly delineated cast of characters are orchestrated with a master’s skill. As in such books as Shroud and The Book of Evidence, the author eschews the obvious at all times, and the narrative is delivered with subtlety and understatement.

From Publishers Weekly
Comparisons with Camus's The Stranger and Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment are not lightly made, but spring irresistibly to mind after finishing Banville's dazzling novel, which was short-listed for Britain's Booker Award and won Ireland's very rich Guinness Peat Aviation Award, adjudicated by Graham Greene. Banville, who has written three previous books but is not widely known here, is literary editor of the Irish Times. His protagonist and first-person narrator is Frederick Montgomery, a former scientist who has taken to drifting aimlessly through life, keenly self-conscious, a brilliant observer of himself and his surroundings, but with no coherent moral center. In the course of a pathetically absurd robbery attempt--he is trying to steal a painting, with which he has become obsessed, from a neighbor of his mother--he brutally and pointlessly kills a maidservant. He tells his story as he sits in jail awaiting his trial, imagining it as a courtroom statement. But is his account--hallucinatory, spellbinding, full of the poetry and pity of life--true? In response to that question from a police inspector, the novel's last chilling line: "All of it. None of it. Only the shame." Banville's style, which is spare yet richly eloquent, and his extraordinary psychological penetration, are what lift his novel to a level of comparison with the greatest writers of crime and guilt. It is difficult to imagine a reader who would not find The Book of Evidence both terrifying and moving.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Freddie Montgomery is a schizophrenic 38-year-old ex-scientist haunting dingy pubs who, nonetheless, ponders life and his illness via this superb novelized murder trial "confession." After study in America, Freddie returns to Ireland to find that his disowning mother has sold what he believes is part of his inheritance from his late father, some paintings that include an old Dutch master of a woman he thinks regards him with caring, benevolent authority. As he steals it, he murders a maid who catches him in the act. His lawyer advises him to plead manslaughter to quash evidence. Instead, the brooding, contradictory Freddie writes the "book of evidence" that we read. How much of it is true, how much sick fancy? Freddie makes us think, too.
- Kenneth Mintz, formerly with Bayonne P.L., N.J.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Following the discovery of the corpse of a highly respected parish priest at Ballyglass House - the Co. Wexford family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family - Detective Inspector St John Strafford is called in from Dublin to investigate.
Strafford faces obstruction from all angles, but carries on determinedly in his pursuit of the murderer. However, as the snow continues to fall over this ever-expanding mystery, the people of Ballyglass are equally determined to keep their secrets.

Max Morden has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with several disturbing things. A recent loss is still taking its toll on him, and a trauma in his past is similarly proving hard to deal with. He decides that he will return to a town on the coast at which he spent a memorable holiday when a boy. His memory of that time devolves on the charismatic Grace family, particularly the seductive twins Myles and Chloe. In a very short time, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with them, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life. But will he be able to exorcise those memories of the past?

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.