John Banville könyvei a rukkolán

John Banville - A ​tenger
Max ​Morden művészettörténész hosszú évtizedek után nem csak az őt ért veszteség és gyász elől menekülve tér vissza a tengerparti kis ír faluba, ahol gyermekként töltött egy szünidőt, de úgy érzi, itt az ideje a régi, egész jövőjét meghatározó tragédiával való szembenézésnek is. Azon a nyáron a különcnek számító Grace család mintha egy másik világból csöppent volna bele az üdülőfaluba álomittas ürességbe. Max számára a házaspár és a vele egyidős tízéves ikrek olyanok voltak, mint az istenek, és őt csakhamar beszippantotta különös életük, amely egyszerre volt csábító és felkavaró. A felesége közeli halálából fakadó fájdalom feldolgozása most összemosódik a gyermekkor, a távoli múlt emlékeinek felidézésével, és az egykori kamasz reflexiói különös módon keverednek az elmúlás közelségétől megrettent férfi szorongásaival. John Banville érzékenységgel megformált szereplői és hangulatai - s nem utolsósorban finom öniróniája - teszik felejthetetlen olvasmányélménnyé ezt a nyugtalanító, mégis megindító és vigaszt nyújtó regényt.

John Banville - Ghosts
The ​second volume in the Freddie Montgomery trilogy. An unnamed murderer has served his time in prison, then comes to live on a sparsely populated island with the enigmatic Professor Silas Kreutznaer and his laconic companion, Licht. A party of castaways then arrives, with uneasy results.

John Banville - Mefisto
The ​central character is caught in a dilemma of the Yeatsian man who must choose between life and work, action and thought, experience and creation. The author's "Doctor Copernicus" won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1976 and "Kepler" won "The Guardian" Fiction Prize in 1981.

John Banville - The ​Newton Letter
A ​historian, about to complete a book on Isaac Newton, rents a cottage in Ireland. His intention is to put the finishing touches to his manuscript. However, as the summer wears on, he becomes obsessed by his writing. By the author of "The Book of Evidence", shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

John Banville - Regreso ​a Birchwood
Una ​de las primeras novelas del Man Booker Prize y Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras JohnBanville, en la que indaga sobre la memoria, la familia y el fin de la inocencia. Novela galardonada con el Allied Irish Bank's Prize y el Irish Arts Council Macaulay Fellowship. «Existo, luego pienso. Eso parece innegable. En esta casa desmadrada dedico las noches a devanar mis recuerdos.» Cuando Gabriel Godkin regresa a Birchwood tras varios años, la gran casa familiar no es más que una propiedad ruinosa con habitantes enajenados. Hurgando en los recuerdos, rememora sus primeras experiencias de amor y de pérdida, pero los desastres se suceden y el joven decide huir con un circo ambulante para buscar a su hermana gemela, desaparecida tiempo atrás. Pronto descubrirá que el hambre y el malestar acechan el campo y que Irlanda también está arruinada. La crítica ha dicho... «Regreso a Birchwood representa un punto de inflexión en la literatura irlandesa contemporánea: es una novela en la que la historia se convierte en una divertida comedia negra repleta de alborotos rurales y de personajes góticos, y un sentido de desconcierto hacia la naturaleza del universo llena sus páginas.» Colm T...

John Banville - Birchwood
John ​Banville's black comedy of life in a disaster-ridden house on a large Irish estate.

John Banville - Végtelenek
A ​nyári napforduló idején, Szent Iván napján vidéki otthonukba gyűlnek a Godley család tagjai, hogy leróják tiszteletüket a haldokló apa, az idős Adam betegágya mellett. Feszültségekkel terhes nap vár rájuk, hiszen mindegyiküknek megvan a maguk baja is. De nincsenek egyedül: rajtuk kívül pajkos, bajkeverő görög istenek népesítik be a baljós hangulatú házat. Mivel képtelenek ellenállni a kísértésnek, beavatkoznak a halandók életébe, kémkednek utánuk, incselkednek velük, sőt olykor el is csábítják némelyiküket, miközben irigykedve szemlélik teremtményeik bohózatba hajló tragédiáját. Az idős Adam a végtelenek fogalmával folytatott küzdelmével írta be nevét a matematika tudományának nagykönyvébe, ám most, hogy földi ideje a végéhez közeledik, saját emlékeinek végtelenjébe merülve tölti utolsó napjait. A kómában fekvő férfi tudatáig nemigen jut el a tény, hogy az istenek nem csupán az emberek életébe, de halálába is képesek beavatkozni, sőt ha kedvük tartja, még az idő folyását is képesek megakasztani. Az időnként trágár humorral átszőtt, és mindvégig mélyenszántó tisztánlátással megírt regény egyszerre kínál az olvasónak gyönyörűségesen evilági kalandot és nyújt számára kifinomult, végtelenül bölcs bepillantást az emberi lét szörnyű, mégis csodás titkaiba.

John Banville - La ​señora Osmond
Tras ​ponerse en la piel de Chandler, Banville se disfraza de Henry James. La última proeza literaria del Premio Príncipe de Asturias: un doble clásico moderno. «Uno de los mejores libros del año.» The Guardian Huyendo de Roma y de un matrimonio demoledor, Isabel Osmond viaja a Londres, donde se repone de la reciente revelación de la traición de su marido durante largos años. ¿Qué hacer ahora, qué camino debería seguir, y cuál es la salida del complejo laberinto emocional en el que lleva tanto tiempo atrapada? Bajo el estímulo del dolor y la certeza de haber sido seriamente agraviada, está determinada a reemprender la búsqueda de libertad e independencia que animó su juventud. Pero debe regresar a Italia y enfrentarse a Gilbert Osmond y deshacerse de su poderoso yugo. ¿Logrará burlar su influencia y afianzar su venganza? La señora Osmondes una proeza literaria con elRetrato de una damade Henry James como telón de fondo: una novela magistral sobre la deslealtad, la corrupción y la ambigüedad moral, y el soberbio retrato de una heroína inolvidable. La crítica ha dicho... «Solo alguien como John Banville podía atreverse a darle una vuelta de tu...

John Banville - Prague ​Pictures
Prague ​is the magic capital of Europe. Since the days of Emperor Rudolf II, "devotee of the stars and cultivator of the spagyric art", who in the late 1500s summoned alchemists and magicians from all over the world to his castle on Hradcany hill, it has been a place of mystery and intrigue. Wars, revolutions, floods, the imposition of Soviet communism, and even the depredations of the tourist boom after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 could not destroy the unique atmosphere of this beautiful, proud, and melancholy city on the Vltava. John Banville traces Prague's often tragic history and portrays the people who made it: the emperors and princes, geniuses and charlatans, heroes and scoundrels. He also paints a portrait of the Prague of today, reveling in its newfound freedoms, eager to join the European Community and at the same time suspicious of what many Praguers see as yet another totalitarian takeover. He writes of his first visit to the city, in the depths of the Cold War, and of subsequent trips there, of the people he met, the friends he made, the places he came to know.

John Banville - Eclipse
In ​his first novel since The Untouchable, John Banville gives us the intensely emotional story of a man discovering for the first time who he has been and what he is becoming. Alexander Cleave—a famous actor who "took to the stage to give myself a cast of characters to inhabit who would be . . . of more weight and moment than I could ever hope to be"—faces the almost certain collapse of his thirty-year career. In physical and psychological retreat, he returns to his abandoned childhood home, believing that, away from his wife and daughter, away from the world at large, alone, without an audience of any kind, he might finally stop performing, catch himself in the act of living, and simply be. But the house is unexpectedly populated. There are Cleave's memories, which seem to rise up out of the house itself: of the years during his childhood when his mother took in boarders; of the beginnings, and the beginnings-of-the-end, of his career and his marriage; of the course of his relationship with his now estranged daughter; and of his father, who committed suicide when Cleave was still a boy. There are the corporeal, but illicit, inhabitants of the house: the caretaker, an unsettling presence "with the ageless aspect of a wastrel son," and the fifteen-year-old housekeeper, a "voluptuary of indolence." And there are the apparitions (ghosts? premonitions? visitations?)—a woman, a child, and a third, ill-defined figure—who Cleave feels are "intricately involved in the problem of whatever it is that has gone wrong with me." Struggling to determine what exactly has gone wrong, and to understand what part the apparitions play in his life and he in theirs, Cleave slowly comes to see the ways in which things and people—himself included—are not what they seem, and the ways in which, inevitably, they reveal what they are. Brilliantly conjured and realized, Eclipse is John Banville at his unique best.

John Banville - Kepler
Hisz ​nékem nem kell semmi a világon, Csak az éj és tündöklő csillaga, Csak a szférák titkos harmóniája... - mentegetőzik Az ember tragédiájá-ban Kepler, a világ egyik legnagyobb matematikusa és csillagásza. De hiába: a társadalmi változásokkal, hatalmi torzsalkodásokkal, intrikákkal vajúdó világ őt sem hagyja békén. Hol a vallása miatt kényszerül menekülésre, hol a családi élet apró és nagyobb gondjai sújtják, hol császári udvarokban kell kedvelt bohócként hajlongania, hol a harmincéves háború elhagyatott, véres országútjain látjuk kóborolni. Esendő ember: egyszer az anyagi javakkal mit sem törődő bogaras csillagászként áll elénk, másszor fogadott lányával pörlekedik némi forintokon. De legelsősorban is: nagy tudós, nagy felfedező, mai tudományunk és világképünk alapjainak egyik lerakója. John Banville lebilincselő életrajzi regénye ezt a komplex embert és ragyogó, mozgalmas, kegyetlen korát mutatja be a huszadik századi olvasónak.

John Banville - Ghosts
The ​second volume in the Freddie Montgomery trilogy. An unnamed murderer has served his time in prison, then comes to live on a sparsely populated island with the enigmatic Professor Silas Kreutznaer and his laconic companion, Licht. A party of castaways then arrives, with uneasy results.

John Banville - Athena
The ​third volume in a trilogy that began with "The Book of Evidence" and "Ghosts". Morrow is at a loose end when, separately, two people beckon him upstairs in an empty Dublin house. One offers him work of a dubious kind, and the other offers him a kind of love.

John Banville - Ancient ​Light
Is ​there a difference between memory and invention? That is the question that haunts Alexander Cleave as he reflects on his first, and perhaps only, love - an underage affair with his best friend’s mother. When his stunted acting career is suddenly, inexplicably revived with a movie role playing a man who may not be who he claims, his young leading lady - famous and fragile - unwittingly gives him the opportunity to see, with startling clarity, the gap between the things he has done and the way he recalls them. Profoundly moving, Ancient Light is written with the depth of character, clarifying lyricism, and heart-wrenching humor that mark all of Man Booker Prize-winning author John Banville’s extraordinary works.

John Banville - Doctor ​Copernicus
Winner ​of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1976 this historical novel is based on the life of Nicholas Koppernigk, better known as Copernicus, whose ideas and writings shattered the medieval view of the universe. "Kepler", also by John Banville, won "The Guardian" Fiction Prize in 1981.

John Banville - The ​Broken Jug - After Heinrich Von Kleist
This ​is novelist Banville's first venture for the stage, a free translation of a work by Heinrich von Kleist. The setting is changed from Germany to the famine-stricken Ballybog of 1846 western Ireland in this cleverly calculated comedy about a corrupt magistrate who is forced to preside over a trial for a crime he himself has committed.

John Banville - Snow
Detective ​Inspector St. John Strafford has been summoned to County Wexford to investigate a murder. A parish priest has been found dead in Ballyglass House, the family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family. The year is 1957 and the Catholic Church rules Ireland with an iron fist. Strafford—flinty, visibly Protestant, and determined to identify the murderer—faces obstruction at every turn, from the heavily accumulating snow to the culture of silence in this tight-knit community. As he delves further, he learns the Osbornes are not at all what they seem. And when his own deputy goes missing, Strafford must work to unravel the ever-expanding mystery before the community’s secrets, like the snowfall itself, threatens to obliterate everything. The incomparable Booker Prize winner's next great crime novel—the story of an aristocratic family whose secrets resurface when a parish priest is found murdered in their home.

John Banville - Shroud
Axel ​Vander, celebrated academic and man of culture, is spending his twilight years on the west coast of America, when, out of the blue, a letter arrives hinting at the secrets he has been hiding for fifty years. To find out just how much the writer knows about his past, Vander arranges to meet her in Turin. But he is thrown into emotional turmoil by this encounter with Cass Cleave, a deeply troubled young woman desperate to discover a reason to continue living; and the meeting of the two leads inexorably towards the disaster. Written in Banville's faultless, almost painfully beautiful prose, Shroud is a novel which is not afraid to ask deep questions, nor to answer them emphatically. It is richly rewarding work from one of the most accomplished novelists of his generation.

John Banville - Kepler ​(angol)
Johannes ​Kepler, born in 1571 in south Germany, was one of the world's greatest mathematicians and astronomers. The author of this book uses this history as a background to his novel, writing a work of historical fiction that is rooted in poverty, squalor and the tyrannical power of emperors.

John Banville - The ​Sea
Incandescent ​prose. Beautifully textured characterisation. Transparent narratives. The adjectives to describe the writing of John Banville are all affirmative, and The Sea is a ringing affirmation of all his best qualities. His publishers are claiming that this novel by the Booker-shortlisted author is his finest yet, and while that claim may have an element of hyperbole, there is no denying that this perfectly balanced book is among the writer's most accomplished work. Max Morden has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with several disturbing things. A recent loss is still taking its toll on him, and a trauma in his past is similarly proving hard to deal with. He decides that he will return to a town on the coast at which he spent a memorable holiday when a boy. His memory of that time devolves on the charismatic Grace family, particularly the seductive twins Myles and Chloe. In a very short time, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with them, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life. But will he be able to exorcise those memories of the past? The fashion in which John Banville draws the reader into this hypnotic and disturbing world is non pareil, and the very complex relationships between his brilliantly delineated cast of characters are orchestrated with a master's skill. As in such books as Shroud and The Book of Evidence, the author eschews the obvious at all times, and the narrative is delivered with subtlety and understatement. The genuine moments of drama, when they do occur, are commensurately more powerful. --Barry Forshaw

John Banville - The ​Untouchable
Narrated ​by the infamous English spy Anthony Blunt, a novel which examines the lives of the Cambridge spies, explores the darker realms of the 20th century, and illuminates its hidden lives and minds. From the author of ATHENA, GHOSTS and NEWTON'S LETTER.

John Banville - The ​Book of Evidence
The ​first in a trilogy with "Ghosts" and "Athena". Freddie Montgomery is a gentleman first and a murderer second. He committed two crimes - he stole a painting from a wealthy family friend and he killed a chambermaid who caught him in the act. Here he tells his story.