Irish writer John Banville announces his retirement after publishing what would be his final novel

The Irish novelist, winner of the Booker Prize in 2005, John Banville He has just published his new novel, titled “The Singularities” and with it he announced his final retirement from literature. In this latest story, published by the label of Alfaguara translation of Anthony Martinthe author narrates the return of an old man to the place of his childhood to sum up his own narrative universe, his retirement and his resistance to continuing to write his detective series.

At 77, the winner of the prize Prince of Asturias of Letters in 2014who under the pseudonym of Benjamin Black, wrote a series of best-selling noir novels, said this new book is the literary summary of his life and work; by heart, because it sickens him to read his previous published books, in which, according to Banville, he only sees problems and errors.

He has repeatedly stated that he would never write a book with the scope of “The Singularities”, a text that is the fruit of the work of more than five years of his life. Regarding his decision, he said he felt too old to start a book like this, in which he brings together his most emblematic characters and where he talks about life and death, nostalgia and longing.

“I’ve reached a certain age and I’m already watching myself to see if I’m starting to lose my words. So far that hasn’t happened, but there will come a day when I will struggle to find them. It would be stupid to start a project and not be able to finish it because I am old You are young and young people look at everything from another side, but I will tell you that from forty you age well faster than you think” John Banville in interview with La Razonm

In “The Singularities” Freddie Montgomery just got out of jail and feels like a renewed name, under the pseudonym of Felix Mordaunt returns to his former childhood home, where the deceased’s family now lives Adam Godleya great physicist whose theory revolutionized the conception of the universe. Mordaunt joins the constellation formed by the son, eternally in the shadow of the famous scientist, his irresistible wife, Hélène, stubborn housekeeper and amorous biographer.

In this novel of more than 300 pages, the author simultaneously reconstructs the love story, at the center of which is Helen, perhaps the author’s most unforgettable female character. In this suspense novel, he makes an apocryphal biography and proposes a scientific theory, in which banville He takes his narrative to new horizons and elevates literature and art as a source of pleasure.

“Literature and the literary world have changed over the past fifty years. People were eagerly awaiting our latest novel. People don’t care now. There is no such idea. The public no longer wants difficult books. The next generation will lose a lot by refusing the difficulty challenge. But difficulty is the very essence of art. There’s nothing really good in art or literature that isn’t difficult. Difficult things are always more than themselves; simple things are only simple. Has no importance. My work is already done.” John Banville.

John Banville He stated that he panics every morning when he sits down to write and a thought crosses him, one that he won’t know how to do, but once he gets into the process, he becomes a other person, “When I get up from my chair, it’s Banville the writer who stays at the table”; also believes that the world today is a terrible place after the tragedies of Syria oh Turkey, “If we could feel the anguish of the world in a second we would die”.

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