Books by John Banville
The Sea
by John Banville
When the art historian Max Morden—grieving the loss of his wife—returns to a seaside village where he holidayed as a child, he relives his life-altering encounters with the well-heeled Grace family. For fans of L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between and other literary coming-of-age stories.
“It’s an adaptation of a play called Amphitryon, which is more famous as a Roman comedy by Plautus than in any other guise, although Molière and Heinrich von Kleist adapted it. And it’s also about the possibility of parallel texts. Banville takes the plot of this ancient play – about how Zeus seduces in disguise the wife of Amphitryon, a woman called Alcmene, and begets Heracles from her, his divine child – and updates this to the present. The hero is a famous mathematician called Adam Godley.” Read more...
Updated Classics (of Greek and Roman Literature)
Daniel Mendelsohn, Memoirist
Interviews where books by John Banville were recommended
Updated Classics (of Greek and Roman Literature), recommended by Daniel Mendelsohn
Greek myths were themselves elastic so there is no reason the classics of Roman and Greek literature shouldn’t be updated, says classicist Daniel Mendelsohn. He talks us through some of his favourites.
Booker Prize-Winning Novels
As we know that many of our readers like to work their way through the list of Booker-winners, we’ve compiled an overview the winning titles from the last two decades.
