The Untouchable

One of the most dazzling and adventurous writers now working in English takes on the enigma of the Cambridge spies in a novel of exquisite menace, biting social comedy, and vertiginous moral complexity. The narrator is the elderly Victor Maskell, formerly of British intelligence, for many years art expert to the Queen. Now he has been unmasked as a Russian agent and subjected to a disgrace that is almost a kind of death. But at whose instigation?

As Maskell retraces his tortuous path from his recruitment at Cambridge to the airless upper regions of the establishment, we discover a figure of manifold doubleness: Irishman and Englishman; husband, father, and lover of men; betrayer and dupe. Beautifully written, filled with convincing fictional portraits of Maskell's co-conspirators, and vibrant with the mysteries of loyalty and identity, The Untouchable places John Banville in the select company of both Conrad and le Carre.

Winner of the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction

Contemporary fiction gets no better than this... Banville's books teem with life and humor. - Patrick McGrath, The New York Times Book Review
Victor Maskell is one of the great characters in recent fiction... The Untouchable is the best work of art in any medium on its] subject. -Washington Post Book World
As remarkable a literary voice as any to come out of Ireland; Joyce and Beckett notwithstanding. -San Francisco Chronicle

Author: John Banville
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 06/30/1998
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.61lbs
Size: 8.07h x 5.12w x 0.87d
ISBN13: 9780679767473
ISBN10: 0679767479
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Literary
- Fiction | Historical | General
- Fiction | War & Military

About the Author
John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of more than ten novels, including The Book of Evidence, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Guinness Peat Aviation Award. He won the Booker Prize for his novel The Sea in 2005. He lives in Dublin.