Shroud
by Banville, John
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket
- ISBN 10
- 0375411305
- ISBN 13
- 9780375411304
- Seller
-
The Woodlands, Texas, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket. 2003. First Edition. Hardcover. 0375411305 . First American Edition. "Axel Vander is an old man, in ill health, recently widowed, a scholar renowned for both his unquestionable authority and the ferocity and violence that often mark his conduct. He is known to be Belgian by birth, to have had a privileged upbringing, to have made a perilous escape from World War II...But Vander is also a master liar..." -from the front flap. Ships same or next business day. Head and tail of spine are bumped, spine slightly skewed. Dust jacket has miminal shelf and edge wear. ; Large 8vo 9" - 10" tall; 257 pages .
Synopsis
John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. His first book, Long Lankin , was published in 1970. His other books are Nightspawn , Birchwood , Doctor Copernicus , Kepler , The Newton Letter , Mefisto , The Book of Evidence (which was shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize), Ghosts , Athena , The Untouchable , and Eclipse . He lives in Dublin.
Reviews
On Mar 31 2010, Serendipity said:
Warning: here be SPOILERS....Another fine example of Banville's eloquent prose being used to tell a twisted, deceitful story concerning notions of the Self and reality. Axel Vander, the snobbish, literate, ageing narrator, has fled the sunny coast of California (where he is a celebrated academic modelled in part after Paul De Man) and returned to the Old World; specifically Turin, to meet and confront a young research student who has unwittingly uncovered a great lie at the heart of Vander's life: that as a youth in Holland he wrote anti-semitic articles in a right-wing journal. But there are deeper secrets than that, not the least of which is that he isn't Axel Vander at all, but a Jewish friend of Vander's who appropriated his name after hearing that Vander had been killed in the early part of the war. Now old and dying, Vander begins an impossible love-affair with his young un-masker. The setting, of course, is significant as the Shroud of Turin is both an object of worship and a fake. As usual with Banville, the prose is exquisite to the point where excessive praise seems superfluous. The plot is of less interest than the delicious descriptive language, and the setting allows Banville to explore the meaning of "meaning", fakery, etc, along with his requisite dose of sex, unhappy ghosts, haunting memories, lies, tenderness and torture. Brilliant. I waited a long time to get around to reading this novel, and I wasn't disappointed.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Good Books In The Woods (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 59407
- Title
- Shroud
- Author
- Banville, John
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket
- Edition
- First Edition
- ISBN 10
- 0375411305
- ISBN 13
- 9780375411304
- Publisher
- Alfred A. Knopf
- Place of Publication
- New York, New York
- Date Published
- 2003
- Keywords
- 0375411305
Terms of Sale
Good Books In The Woods
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Good Books In The Woods
Biblio member since 2010
The Woodlands, Texas
About Good Books In The Woods
We are an open shop with about 40,000 books. Our specialties are modern first editions and history.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Tail
- The heel of the spine.
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....