The Book of Evidence

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title The Book of Evidence
Authors and Contributors      By (author) John Banville
Introduction by Colm Toibin
SeriesPicador Classic
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:224
Dimensions(mm): Height 197,Width 130
Category/GenreModern and contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
ISBN/Barcode 9781447275367
ClassificationsDewey:823.92
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Pan Macmillan
Imprint Picador
Publication Date 9 October 2014
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

Freddie Montgomery has committed two crimes. He stole a small Dutch master from a wealthy family friend, and he murdered a chambermaid who caught him in the act. He has little to say about the dead girl. He killed her, he says, because he was physically capable of doing so. It made perfect sense to smash her head in with a hammer. What he cannot understand, and would desperately like to know, is why he was so moved by an unattributed portrait of a middle-aged woman that he felt compelled to steal it . . .

Author Biography

John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of fifteen novels. His first book, Long Lankin, was published in 1970. His other works include Doctor Copernicus (which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1976), Kepler (which was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1981), The Newton Letter (which was filmed for Channel 4), Mefisto, Ghosts, Athena, The Untouchable, Eclipse, Shroud and The Sea, which won the 2005 Man Booker Prize. He was recently awarded the Franz Kafka Prize. He lives in Dublin.

Reviews

Remarkable. . . If all crime novels were like this one, there would no longer be the need for a genre -- Ruth Rendell The Book of Evidence is a major work of fiction in which every suave moment calmly detonates to show the murderous gleam within. Banville writes a dangerous and clear-running prose and has a grim gift of seeing people's souls -- Don DeLillo Banville has excelled himself in a flawlessly flowing prose whose lyricism, patrician irony and aching sense of loss are reminiscent of Lolita * Observer * One of the most important writers now at work in English - a key thinker, in fact, in fiction * London Review of Books *