John Banville

John Banville (born 8 December 1945 in Wexford) is an Irish novelist. His books include Doctor Copernicus (1976), Kepler (1981), The Book of Evidence (1989), The Untouchable (1997) and The Sea, which won the Booker Prize in 2005. He was literary editor of The Irish Times from 1988 to 1999. Under the pen name Benjamin Black he wrote the Quirke crime novels, set in 1950s Dublin, then returned to crime fiction under his own name with Snow (2020), April in Spain (2021), The Lock-Up (2023) and The Drowned (2024). He received the Franz Kafka Prize in 2011 and the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in 2014.