The Book of Evidence

John Banville · b. 1945 · Ireland

Why it matters

An idle, cultured man confesses to a stupid, brutal murder committed almost as an afterthought, and can only account for it through his own dazzling prose. Banville's breakthrough study of aesthetic self-regard curdled into monstrosity.

At a glance

Ornate, self-conscious first-person prose from a narrator who revels in evasion.