Shroud -- John Banville, Paperback

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea comes a splendidly moving, "hypnotic" exploration (The New York Times) of identity, duplicity, and desire, starring a very old, recently widowed man with secrets and the mysterious young woman destined to either destroy or save him.

One part Nietzsche, one part Humbert Humbert, and a soupcon of Milton's Lucifer, Axel Vander, the dizzyingly unreliable narrator of John Banville's masterful new novel, is the bearer of a fearsome reputation as a literary dandy and bully. A product of the Old World, he is also an escapee from its conflagrations, with the wounds to prove it. And everything about him is a lie.

Now those lies have been unraveled by a mysterious young woman whom Vander calls "Miss Nemesis." They are to meet in Turin, a city best known for its enigmatic shroud. Is her purpose to destroy Vander or to save him--or simply to show him what lies beneath the shroud in which he has wrapped his life?

Author: John Banville
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 06/08/2004
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.10w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780375725302

Review Citation(s):
New York Times 07/18/2004 pg. 20

About the Author
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, Kepler, The Newton Letter, Mefisto, The Book of Evidence (which was shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize), Ghosts, Athena, The Untouchable, and Eclipse. He lives in Dublin.