Overview

The Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea re-creates the life of the Renaissance mathematical genius Johannes Kepler and his incredible drive to chart the orbits of the planets and the geometry of the universe. Johannes Kepler, born in 1571 in southern Germany, was one of the world's greatest mathematicians and astronomers. The novel Kepler by John Banville brilliantly re-creates his life and his work, which laid the foundation of the universe even while he was being driven from exile to exile by religious and domestic strife. At the same time, it illuminates the harsh realities of the Renaissance world, rich in imaginative daring but rooted in poverty, squalor and the tyrannical power of emperors. ""What Banville writes is historically accurate, but his [are] a novelist's truth, and...a lover's prose."" --Newsweek

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9781335653079

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Reviews

"""The Irish master."" --New Yorker ""One periodically rereads a [Banville] sentence just to marvel at its beauty, originality and elegance."" --USA TODAY ""John Banville deserves his Booker Prize."" --Los Angeles Times Book Review ""[Banville's] books are like baroque cathedrals, filled with elaborate passages."" --Paris Review ""A grand writer with a seductive style."" --Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review ""Banville is a master at capturing the most fleeting memory or excruciating twinge of self-awareness with riveting accuracy."" --People ""A brilliant stylist."" --Christian Science Monitor ""Represents a watershed in contemporary Irish writing."" --Colm Tóibín ""John Banville is the heir to Nabokov."" --Sunday Telegraph ""One of the best novelists in English."" --Edmund White, Guardian ""He cannot write an unpolished phrase, so we read him slowly, relishing the stream of pleasures he affords."" --The Independent (UK) ""The heir to Proust."" --Daily Beast ""A great storyteller."" --Observer ""Banville's ventriloquism is word-perfect."" --Vulture"

Author Information

JOHN BANVILLE was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of numerous novels, including The Sea, which won the 2005 Booker Prize, and the DI Quirke novels written under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. In 2011 he was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize, in 2013 he was awarded the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature and in 2014 he won the Prince of Asturias Award, Spain's most important literary prize. He lives in Dublin.

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