Nightspawn
by John Banville
On This Page
Description
‘They took everything from me. Everything.’ So says the central character of Nightspawn, John Banville’s elusive, first novel, in which the author rehearses now familiar attributes: his humour, ironies, and brilliant knowing. In the arid setting of the Aegean, Ben White indulges in an obsessive quest to assemble his ‘story’ and to untangle his relationships with a cast of improbable figures. Banville’s subversive, Beckettian fiction embraces themes of freedom and betrayal, and show more toys with an implausible plot, the stuff of an ordinary ‘thriller’ shadowed by political intrigue. In this elaborate artifact, Banville’s characters ‘sometimes lose the meaning of things, and everything is just . . . funny’. There begins their search for ‘the magic to combat any force’. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
91+ Works 28,103 Members
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Nightspawn
- Original title
- Nightspawn
- Original publication date
- 1971
- Important places
- Mediterranean Region
- Original language
- English
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 69
- Popularity
- 455,375
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.15)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 2
