Shroud

by JohnBanville (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.25

  Axel Vander, celebrated academic and man of culture, is spending his twilight years on the west coast of America. For decades he has lived with the knowledge of a tragedy of which he was both perpetrator and victim. Now, out of the blue, a letter arrives hinting at the secrets he has been hiding for fifty years. To find out just how much the writer knows about his past Vander arranges to meet her in Turin. But he is thrown into emotional turmoil by this encounter with Cass Cleave, a deeply troubled young woman desperate to discover a reason to continue living; and the meeting of the two leads inexorably towards disaster. Written in Banville's faultless, almost painfully beautiful prose, Shroud is a novel which is not afraid to ask deep questions, nor to answer them emphatically. It is a richly rewarding work from one of the most accomplished novelists of his generation.

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $4.20

  'Shroud will not be easily surpassed for its combination of wit, moral complexity and compassion. It is hard to see what more a novel could do' Irish Times Axel Vander, distinguished intellectual and elderly academic, is not the man he seems. When a letter arrives out of the blue, threatening to unveil his secrets -- and carefully concealed identity -- Vander travels to Turin to meet its author. There, muddled by age and alcohol, unable always to distinguish fact from fiction, Vander comes face to face with the woman who has the knowledge to unmask him, Cass Cleave. However, her sense of reality is as unreliable as his, and the two are quickly drawn together, their relationship dark, disturbed and doomed to disaster from its very start. 'In beautiful, lucid prose John Banville describes a tragedy so strongly rooted in history and character that, like all real tragedies, it could not happen otherwise' The Times 'Banville is merciless in the details ...he has a gift for enigmatic clarity' Daily Telegraph 'The narrative frequently takes on the qualities of a dream, writhing with pursuits and escapes, peopled by shape-shifters and avatars, subject to its own climatic and topographical realities' Guardian 'A moving and shockingly intimate record of life lost and found again' Time Out

• New

  Paperback
  2010

  $11.72

  'Shroud will not be easily surpassed for its combination of wit, moral complexity and compassion. It is hard to see what more a novel could do' Irish Times Axel Vander, distinguished intellectual and elderly academic, is not the man he seems. When a letter arrives out of the blue, threatening to unveil his secrets -- and carefully concealed identity -- Vander travels to Turin to meet its author. There, muddled by age and alcohol, unable always to distinguish fact from fiction, Vander comes face to face with the woman who has the knowledge to unmask him, Cass Cleave. However, her sense of reality is as unreliable as his, and the two are quickly drawn together, their relationship dark, disturbed and doomed to disaster from its very start. 'In beautiful, lucid prose John Banville describes a tragedy so strongly rooted in history and character that, like all real tragedies, it could not happen otherwise' The Times 'Banville is merciless in the details ...he has a gift for enigmatic clarity' Daily Telegraph 'The narrative frequently takes on the qualities of a dream, writhing with pursuits and escapes, peopled by shape-shifters and avatars, subject to its own climatic and topographical realities' Guardian 'A moving and shockingly intimate record of life lost and found again' Time Out