John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of many highly acclaimed and prize-winning novels including The Sea, which won the 2005 Booker Prize. He has been awarded the Franz Kafka Prize and a literary award from the Lannan Foundation. He lives in Dublin.
No novel burrowed deeper beneath my skin than The Untouchable . . . Prose of great elegance, applied to a sardonic narrative, created an atmosphere at once austere, chilling and utterly believable. -- John Coldstream * Daily Telegraph * Banville is the most intelligent and stylish novelist currently at work in English . . . the mien is austere and Victorian; the awareness, the ironic readings of the contemporary are razor-sharp. -- George Steiner * Observer * Brilliant displays of power and control . . . magnificently written and, in its exploration of inhumanity, startlingly humane. -- Alex Clark * Guardian * The Untouchable is an engrossing, exquisitely written and almost bewilderingly smart book . . . It’s the fullest book I’ve read in a very long time, utterly accomplished, thoroughly readable, written by a novelist of vast talent -- Richard Ford, author of <i>Independence Day<i>