The Supreme Fictions of John Banville

This is the most up-to-date and comprehensive study available of Ireland’s foremost novelist. It offers critical commentary on the full range of Banville’s fiction (including the plays) and views that fiction in the contexts of contemporary critical theory. It argues that Banville’s work is deeply influenced by Romantic and Modernist mythologies of the creative imagination. The introduction surveys Banville’s relation to Irish, European and American writing, and is followed by close textual analyses of each of Banville’s texts, from Long Lankin to The Untouchable.