Book description
'Sleek, beautiful, breathtakingly cunning prose' Sunday Times Morrow -
a clerkish, middle-aged type encumbered with a chain-smoking dying aunt
and a considerable talent for wallowing - is at a loose end when, on two
separate occasions, he is beckoned up the stairs of an empty Dublin
house. The first is an offer of dubious work, and Morrow soon becomes
caught up in a conspiracy to authenticate a series of fake paintings.
The second, possibly even odder, is an offer of a love - of a sort.
Written in typically luminous prose and featuring a rich cast of
characters, Athena is a paean to art, painting, and love, in all its
mercurial richness. 'One of the most profoundly intelligent,
introspective novels of recent years, questioning the perceptions of
author, narrator, reader and critic' Good Book Guide 'The consummately
achieved and entrancing creation of a master of language: in the fullest
sense a work of art' Scotsman 'Athena is a love letter to Morrow's
passions, to love, to art and to the paintings he examines: works on
classical themes, in which a moment's obsession, lust, loss and magic
are preserved for ever' Literary Review Volume Three of the Frames
Trilogy
John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. His first book,
Long Lankin, was published in 1970. His other books are
Nightspawn , Birchwood, Doctor Copernicus (which
won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1976), Kepler (which
was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1981), The Newton
Letter (which was filmed for Channel 4), Mefisto, The
Book of Evidence (shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize and
winner of the 1989 Guinness Peat Aviation Award), Ghosts,
The Untouchable, Eclipse , Shroud and The
Sea. He has received a literary award from the Lannan Foundation.
He lives in Dublin.
