John
Banville was born in Wexford in 1945 and now lives in Dublin.
His first book, Long Lankin, was published in 1970 (revised
edition, Gallery Books, 1984). He has published thirteen novels:
Nightspawn, Birchwood, Doctor Copernicus, Kepler,
The Newton Letter, Mefisto, The Book of Evidence,
which was short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize and which won
the 1989 GPA Award, Ghosts, Athena, The Untouchable,
Eclipse, Shroud and The Sea, winner of the 2005 Booker Prize. Other awards include the Allied
Irish Banks Prize, the Macauley Fellowship, the American-Irish
Foundation Literary Award, the James
Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Prize and the Guinness Peat
Aviation Award.
The Gallery Press publishes Long Lankin, Nightspawn and his versions of plays by Heinrich von
Kleist, The Broken Jug (1994), God's Gift (2000), Love in the Wars (2005) and Conversation in the Mountains (2008) a special limited edition radio play, with drawings and paintings by Donald Teskey.