Ghosts by John Banville

An unforgettable amalgam of enchantment and menace A beautiful, beguiling book full of resonances that continue to sound long after you've turned the final page. Its imagining is magical, its execution dazzlingly skilful.' Sunday Tribune Ghosts opens with a shipwreck, leaving a party of sightseers temporarily marooned on an island. The stranded castaways make their way towards the refuge of the isle's reclusive savant; but the big isolated house which is home to Professor Silas Kreutznaer and his laconic assistant, Licht, is also home to another, unnamed presence . . . Onto this seemingly haunted island, where a strange singing hangs in the air, Banville drops a scrumptious cast of characters – including a murderer – and weaves a tale where the details are clear but the conclusion polymorphous – shifting appearances, transformations and thwarted assumptions make this world of uneasy calm utterly enthralling. 'As fascinating, complex, stimulating and energetic as any work of art . . . A work which proves Banville as a master, the artist in total control of his craft' The Times 'John Banville's funniest book . . . another triumph by our most outrageously inventive and daring novelist' Sunday Independent 'Makes this astonishingly attractive novelist one of the most important writers now at work in English – a key thinker, in fact, in fiction' London Review of Books