Described in the London Review of Books as “one of the most important writers now at work in English”, John Banville is author of 12 works of fiction, a collection of short stories and three plays. Like few other novelists active in this period – A.S. Byatt and Peter Ackroyd, for example – Banville writes fiction that neither succumbs to a kind of extreme postmodern experimentalism nor attempts a nostalgic reconstruction of the unattainable past. Banville’s management of historical events and subjects sets him apart from more politically involved writers, conveyed, as it is, in a language that plays with and subtly subverts fixed categories of knowledge (fact/fiction; real/unreal).

Naturally, his

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First published 17 September 2003

Citation: Palazzolo, Pietra. "John Banville". The Literary Encyclopedia. 17 September 2003.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=246, accessed 9 February 2010.]