By John Banville
Some of the most brilliant and adventurous writers now operating in English takes at the enigma of the Cambridge spies in a unique of beautiful threat, biting social comedy, and vertiginous ethical complexity. The narrator is the aged Victor Maskell, previously of British intelligence, for a few years artwork professional to the Queen. Now he has been unmasked as a Russian agent and subjected to a shame that's virtually one of those demise. yet at whose instigation?
As Maskell retraces his tortuous course from his recruitment at Cambridge to the airless top areas of the institution, we find a determine of manifold doubleness: Irishman and Englishman; husband, father, and lover of fellows; betrayer and dupe. fantastically written, choked with convincing fictional pictures of Maskell's co-conspirators, and colourful with the mysteries of loyalty and id, The Untouchable areas John Banville within the opt for corporation of either Conrad and le Carre.
Winner of the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction
"Contemporary fiction will get no greater than this... Banville's books teem with lifestyles and humor." - Patrick McGrath, The ny occasions booklet Review
"Victor Maskell is likely one of the nice characters in fresh fiction... The Untouchable is the simplest murals in any medium on [its] subject." -Washington publish e-book World
"As outstanding a literary voice as any to return out of eire; Joyce and Beckett notwithstanding." -San Francisco Chronicle
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Extra resources for The Untouchable
Sample text
I shall strip away layer after layer of grime— the toffee-coloured varnish and caked soot left by a lifetime of dissembling—until I come to the very thing itself and know it for what it is. My soul. My self. (When I laugh out loud like this the room seems to start back in surprise and dismay, with hand to lip. ) I kept my nerve in face of that pack of jackals from the newspapers today. Did men die because of you? ’Yes, dearie, swooned quite away. But no, no, I was superb, if I do say so myself.
I thought: she can’t be from Skryne, he would never send someone with so little self-control. After a beat of flushed silence I said softly: “In my world, there are no simple questions, and precious few answers of any kind. ” Still fixed on that paperknife, she set her lips so tightly they turned white, and gave her head a quick, stubborn little shake, and I thought, almost with fondness, of Vivienne, my sometime wife, who was the only supposedly grown-up person I ever knew who used actually to stamp her foot when she was angry.
What is my purpose here? I may say, I just sat down to write, but I am not deceived. I have never done anything in my life that did not have a purpose, usually hidden, sometimes even from myself. Am I, like Querrell, out to settle old scores? Or is it perhaps my intention to justify my deeds, to offer extenuations? I hope not. On the other hand, neither do I want to fashion for myself yet another burnished mask … Having pondered for a moment, I realise that the metaphor is obvious: attribution, verification, restoration.