William John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W. B. Yeats and Henry James are the two real influences on his work.
Atomised, also known as The Elementary Particles, is a novel by the French author Michel Houellebecq, published in France in 1998. It tells the story of two half-brothers, Michel and Bruno, and their mental struggles against their situations in modern society. It was translated into English by Frank Wynne as Atomised in the UK and as The Elementary Particles in the US. It won the International Dublin Literary Award for writer and translator.
Mickelsson's Ghosts, published in 1982, is American writer John Gardner's ninth novel. It was the final novel published during Gardner’s lifetime.
The Sea is a 2005 novel by John Banville. His fourteenth novel, it won the 2005 Booker Prize.
When We Were Orphans is the fifth novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguro, published in 2000. It is loosely categorised as a detective novel. When We Were Orphans was shortlisted for the 2000 Booker Prize.
Headlong is a novel by Michael Frayn, published in 1999. The plot centres on the discovery of a long-lost painting from Pieter Bruegel's series The Months. The story is essentially a farce, but contains a large amount of scholarship about the painter. Frayn distinguishes between the iconology and iconography of the paintings and suggests that rather than simply being a series of pastoral images they symbolise a Dutch populace undergoing great suffering as a result of Spanish rule.
Half a Life is a 2001 novel by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul published by Alfred A. Knopf. The novel is set in India, Africa and Europe. Half a Life was long listed for the Booker prize (2001).
Dorian, an Imitation is a British novel by Will Self. The book is a modern take on Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. The novel was originally published by Viking Press in 2002 and subsequently by Penguin in 2003. Self was originally asked to adapt the 1890 Wilde novel into a film screenplay, but this project did not come to fruition. Instead, Self took this uncompleted screenplay and re-worked it into a novel, which he described as "an imitation - and a homage" to the Wilde original.
Yellow Dog is the title of a 2003 novel by the British writer Martin Amis. Like many of Amis's novels, the book is set in contemporary London. The novel contains several strands that appear to be linked, although a complete resolution of the plot is not immediately apparent. An early working title for the novel, according to an interview Amis gave with The Observer Review in September 2002, was Men in Power. Despite some rather harsh criticism, Yellow Dog made the longlist for the Man Booker Prize in 2003.
Hotel World is a 2001 novel written by Ali Smith, published by Hamish Hamilton. It won both the Scottish Arts Council Book Award (2001) and the Encore Award (2002).
Shroud is a 2002 novel by John Banville. It is the second book in the Alexander and Cass Cleave Trilogy, which also contains the novels Eclipse, published in 2000, and Ancient Light, published in 2012.
The Infinities is a 2009 novel by John Banville.
Carole Morin is a Glasgow-born novelist who lives in Soho, London. She has had five novels published: Lampshades, Penniless in Park Lane, Dead Glamorous, Spying on Strange Men and Fleshworld.
Oxygen is the third novel by English author, Andrew Miller, released on 6 September 2001 through Sceptre. Although the novel received mixed reviews, it was shortlisted for both a Man Booker Prize and a Whitbread Award in 2001.
Ancient Light is a 2012 novel by John Banville. First published on 7 July 2012, the novel concludes a trilogy concerning Alexander Cleave and his daughter, Cass. Eclipse (2000) and Shroud (2002) were Ancient Light's literary predecessors in the Banville canon.
The Giant, O'Brien is a novel by Hilary Mantel, published in 1998. It is a fictionalised account of Irish giant Charles Byrne (O'Brien) and Scottish surgeon John Hunter.
The Impressionist is Hari Kunzru's debut novel, first published in 2003. Kunzru received the Betty Trask Award and the Somerset Maugham Award for the book's publication.
The Light of Day is a 2003 novel by English author Graham Swift, published seven years after his previous novel, the Booker Prize winner Last Orders.
John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. He has won the Booker Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature; has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; knighted by Italy; is one of the most acclaimed writers in the English language.
The Singularities is a novel by the Irish author John Banville, published in 2022. It is based on characters and themes from the author's earlier novels. Felix Mordaunt, sentenced to life for murder, has been released from prison. He goes to visit his childhood home which is now occupied by Adam and Helen Godley, a middle aged couple. Adam's late father, Adam senior, was a famous academic. He is the author of the "Brahma theory", a hypothesis of space, time and multiple universes. Adam engages William Jaybey, an academic author, to write a biography of his father; Jaybey accepts the commission though he has little regard for Professor Godley's work.
