John Banville (edit name/settings)

John Banville (born December 1945) is an Irish novelist and screenwriter. His novel The Book of Evidence (1989) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award. His eighteenth novel, The Sea, won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. He sometimes writes under the open pseudonym Benjamin Black.

Banville is known for his precise and cold prose style, Nabokovian inventiveness, and for the dark humour of his generally arch narrators. His stated ambition is to give his prose "the kind of denseness and thickness that poetry has".

Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland. He is the youngest of three siblings; his older brother Vincent is also a novelist and has written under the name Vincent Lawrence as well as his own. His sister Vonnie Banville-Evans has written both a children's novel and a reminiscence of growing up in Wexford.

Banville was educated at a Christian Brothers school and at St Peter's College in Wexford. After school he worked as a clerk at Aer Lingus which allowed him to travel at deeply-discounted rates. He lived in the United States during 1968 and 1969. On his return to Ireland he became a sub-editor at the Irish Press, rising eventually to the position of chief sub-editor. His first book, Long Lankin, was published in 1970.

After the Irish Press collapsed in 1995, he became a sub-editor at the Irish Times. He was appointed literary editor in 1998. The Irish Times, too, suffered severe financial problems, and Banville was offered the choice of taking a redundancy package or working as a features department sub-editor. He left. Banville has been a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books since 1990. In 1984, he was elected to the Irish arts association Aosdána, but resigned in 2001, so that some other artist might be allowed to receive the cnuas <annuity>. He described himself in an interview with Argentine paper La Nacíon, as a West Brit. Banville also writes crime fiction under the pen name Benjamin Black, beginning with Christine Falls (2006).

Banville is considered by critics as a master stylist of the English language, and his writing has been described as perfectly crafted, beautiful, dazzling. David Mehegan of the Boston Globe calls Banville "one of the great stylists writing in English today"; Don DeLillo described his work "dangerous and clear-running prose;" Val Nolan in The Sunday Business Post calls his style "lyrical, fastidious, and occasionally hilarious"; The Observer described his 1989 work, The Book of Evidence, as "flawlessly flowing prose whose lyricism, patrician irony and aching sense of loss are reminiscent of Lolita." Banville himself has admitted that he is "trying to blend poetry and fiction into some new form" Banville is known for his dark humour, and sharp, wintery wit.

Banville has written two trilogies; The Revolutions Trilogy, consisting of Doctor Copernicus, Kepler, The Newton Letter and a second unnamed trilogy consisting of The Book of Evidence, Ghosts, Athena.

Banville is highly influenced by Heinrich von Kleist, having written adaptations of three of his plays (including Amphitrion) and having again used Amphitrion as a basis for his novel The Infinities.

Awards
1976  - James Tait Black Memorial Prize - Doctor Copernicus
1981 - Guardian Fiction Prize -  Kepler
Allied Irish Bank Fiction Prize -  Kepler
American-Irish Foundation Award -  Birchwood
1989 - Guinness Peat Aviation Award - The Book of Evidence
Booker Prize (shortlisted) -  The Book of Evidence
2005 - Booker Prize - The Sea
2006 - Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year - The Sea
2007 - Royal Society of Literature Fellowship
Prix Madeleine Zepter
2009 - Honorary Patronage of the University Philosophical Society

Bibliography
Short story collection
* Long Lankin (1970; revised ed.1984)

Novels
* Nightspawn (1971)
* Birchwood (1973)
* The Revolutions Trilogy :
o Doctor Copernicus: A Novel (1976)
o Kepler, a Novel (1981)
o The Newton Letter: An Interlude (1982)
* Mefisto (1986)
* The Book of Evidence (1989)
* Ghosts (1993)
* Athena: A Novel (1995)
* The Ark (1996) (only 260 copies published)
* The Untouchable (1997)
* Eclipse (2000)
* Shroud (2002)
* Prague Pictures: Portrait Of A City (2003)
* The Sea (2005)
* The Sinking City (forthcoming<13>)
* The Infinities (2009)

Plays
* The Broken Jug: After Heinrich von Kleist (1994)
* Seachange (performed 1994 in the Focus Theatre, Dublin; unpublished)
* Dublin 1742 (performed 2002 in The Ark, Dublin; a play for 9–14 year olds; unpublished)
* God's Gift: A Version of Amphitryon by Heinrich von Kleist (2000)
* Love In The Wars (adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's Penthesilea, 2005)
* Conversation In The Mountains (radio play, forthcoming 2008)

As "Benjamin Black"
* Christine Falls (2006)
* The Silver Swan (2007)
* The Lemur (2008, previously serialised in The New York Times)
* Elegy for April (2010)

Book Reviews
* "The Family Pinfold" The New York Review of Books 54/11 (28 June 2007) : 20–21 <reviews Alexander Waugh, Fathers and Sons : the Autobiography of a Family>
* "Trump Cards" Bookforum (Dec/Jan 2010) : John Banville on The Original of Laura, Nabokov's final, unfinished novel.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Battelle