The Untouchable by John Banville Paperback Book

Description: The Untouchable by John Banville This is the book John Banville was born to write Catherine Lockerbie, Scotsman FORMAT Paperback CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Examines the lives of the Cambridge spies, and in particular Anthony Blunt. The story is told by Blunt, in the form of a journal which starts on the "first day of the new life". The author uses the "secret life" as a way to explore the darker realms of the 20th century and its hidden minds. Notes A fictional portrayal of the Cambridge spies written in the form of a journal kept by Victor Maskell. Reissue. Author Biography John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. His first book, Long Lankin, was published in 1970. His other books are Nightspawn, Birchwood, 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, The Book of Evidence (shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize and winner of the 1998 Guinness Peat Aviation Award), Ghosts, Athena, The Untouchable, Eclipse and Shroud. He has received a literary award from the Lannan Foundation. The Sea won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2005. John Banville lives in Dublin. Review No novel burrowed deeper beneath my skin than The Untouchable . . . Prose of great elegance, applied to a sardonic narrative, created an atmosphere at once austere, chilling and utterly believable. -- John Coldstream * Daily Telegraph *Banville is the most intelligent and stylish novelist currently at work in English . . . the mien is austere and Victorian; the awareness, the ironic readings of the contemporary are razor-sharp. -- George Steiner * Observer *Brilliant displays of power and control . . . magnificently written and, in its exploration of inhumanity, startlingly humane. -- Alex Clark * Guardian * Promotional This is the book John Banville was born to write Catherine Lockerbie, Scotsman Kirkus UK Review The narrator of this slippery fiction is an etiolated, disgraced former curator of the Queens pictures at Buckingham Palace. As the novel opens he has been betrayed. His secret life is laid out in the tabloids for all to gaze upon; but this version too is revealed as a superficial construction. Even the most straightforward life contains its shadowy recesses, duplicities and evasions - and the life of Victor Maskell has been far from straightforward. Bollinger Bolshevism at Cambridge in the 1930s, wartime espionage, a life of denial lived at the heart of the Establishment. Banville, the author of The Book of Evidence, knows that the most treacherous enemies within are not political but metaphysical. He writes, everything was itself and at the same time something else. This subtle and beautifully written book draws out the hidden truths behind the statement. (Kirkus UK) Kirkus US Review An icy, detailed portrait of a traitor, and a precise meditation on the nature of belief and betrayal. Banville (Athena, 1995, etc.) tends to allow the shimmering intensity of his prose to overcome plot and character. This time out, though, he keeps matters moving along briskly and his prose, while still vigorous, firmly under control. Sir Victor Maskell, an elderly, much-honored art historian, is revealed in Parliament to have been a spy for the Soviets. Stripped of his knighthood, his various positions and honors, and dying of cancer, Maskell sits down to explain himself. The resulting memoir, ironic, full of lacerating self-knowledge and acidic portraits of his fellow traitors, provides both a lively portrait of art and intelligence circles in Britain from the 1920s to the 70s and a meditation on the forces that inspire treason. Victor is a suitably complex and tormented figure. (Banville, to his credit, is clearly not interested in making him a particularly sympathetic one.) He is a perpetual outsider: An Irish Protestant, far less self-assured than his elegant Cambridge classmates, ambiguous about his sexuality, and more interested in art history than in the contemporary world, he seems to embrace Marxism more to fit in than to assert some firm belief, and to become a traitor more to please his friends than to assert a cause. This is, of course, well-plowed ground: Maskell is in some ways decidedly similar to Anthony Blunt, the art historian/spy, and his circle equally recognizable. Still, Maskells fierce intelligence, his unblinking consideration of his past, sets this book apart from most fictional explorations of the spys mentality. Theres another reason that Maskell is writing his memoirs: He hopes, by doing so, to uncover who it was that turned him in, and why. He does so, in a bitterly ironic and understated climax. A resonant reworking of a seemingly exhausted genre, and a subtle, sad, and deeply moving work. (Kirkus Reviews) Prizes Short-listed for Whitbread Novel Award 1998 (UK) Review Quote No novel burrowed deeper beneath my skin than The Untouchable . . . Prose of great elegance, applied to a sardonic narrative, created an atmosphere at once austere, chilling and utterly believable. Promotional "Headline" This is the book John Banville was born to write Catherine Lockerbie, Scotsman Details ISBN033033932X Author John Banville Pages 416 Publisher Pan Macmillan ISBN-10 033033932X ISBN-13 9780330339322 Format Paperback Imprint Picador Place of Publication London Country of Publication United Kingdom Alternative 9780754000624 DEWEY 823.914 Birth 1945 Media Book Edition 1st Audience Age 18 UK Release Date 2010-08-06 Year 2010 Publication Date 2010-08-06 Audience General AU Release Date 1998-06-30 NZ Release Date 1998-06-30 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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