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The Untouchable

Brief Description
Inspired by the true story of Anthony Blunt and the Cambridge Five spy ring, The Untouchable is a beautifully crafted novel by John Banville, author of the Booker Prize-winning The Sea. Victor Maskell has been betrayed. After an announcement in the House of Commons and the... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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Inspired by the true story of Anthony Blunt and the Cambridge Five spy ring, from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea

'This is the book John Banville was born to write' Catherine Lockerbie, Scotsman. Now part of the Picador Collection.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Inspired by the true story of Anthony Blunt and the Cambridge Five spy ring, The Untouchable is a beautifully crafted novel by John Banville, author of the Booker Prize-winning The Sea.

Victor Maskell has been betrayed. After an announcement in the House of Commons and the hasty revelation of his double life of wartime espionage, his disgrace is public, his knighthood revoked, his position as curator of the Queen's pictures terminated. There are questions to be answered. For whom has he been sacrificed? To what has he sacrificed his life?

The Untouchable is an engrossing, exquisitely written and almost bewilderingly smart book... It's the fullest book I've read in a very long time, utterly accomplished, thoroughly readable, written by a novelist of vast talent. β€” Richard Ford

Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

Series: Picador Collection

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781035076802

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 12 February 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Picador

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 130.0mm

Height: 197.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 416

About the Author

John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of many highly acclaimed and prize-winning novels including The Sea, which won the 2005 Booker Prize. He has been awarded the Franz Kafka Prize and a literary award from the Lannan Foundation. He lives in Dublin.

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