Ghosts

Ghosts opens with a shipwreck, leaving a party of sightseers temporarily marooned on an island. The stranded castaways make their way towards the refuge of the isle's reclusive savant; but the big isolated house which is home to Professor Silas Kreutznaer and his laconic assistant, Licht, is also home to another, unnamed presence . . .

Onto this seemingly haunted island, where a strange singing hangs in the air, John Banville drops a scrumptious cast of characters—including a murderer—and weaves a tale where the details are clear but the conclusion polymorphous. Shifting appearances, transformations, and thwarted assumptions make this world of uneasy calm utterly enthralling.

'As fascinating, complex, stimulating and energetic as any work of art . . . A work which proves Banville as a master, the artist in total control of his craft' – The Times

'John Banville's funniest book . . . another triumph by our most outrageously inventive and daring novelist' – The Sunday Independent

'Makes this astonishingly attractive novelist one of the most important writers now at work in English – a key thinker, in fact, in fiction' – The London Review of Books

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