Description: John Banville offers a close analysis of most of Banville's major novels, his Quirke crime novels, and his dramatic adaptations of Heinrich von Kleist's plays. It asserts that Banville's fiction can be viewed both as an extended interrogation of the meaning and status of art, and that it is itself representative of the type of art admired in the pages of the novels.
Review Quotes: "[S]cholarly solid, shrewd, and inspiring. The broadly conceived take on John Banville's writing through and with the visual arts is exceedingly valuable and so is the pioneering exploration of the Benjamin Black novels and the detective genre. This monograph is an important contribution to Banville studies and to the broader field of Irish studies."--Nordic Irish Studies