John Banville interview

Chris Boyd, an Australian arts and culture critic, garnered some time with John Banville at the recent Sydney Writers Festival. The resulting interviews appear here at the "Sarsaparilla" blog and here at Chris' "The Morning After" blog--and it really doesn't matter which one you read first.

The interviews are as much about literary interviews as about Banville's work and his views on a wide variety of subjects.

One choice Banville comment from the interview: "An awful lot of women write detective fiction, very few women read it!"

What did I think of Banville winning the Man Booker Prize for his The Sea? Click here to find out.

What did Michiko Kakutani think of The Sea? It's "a stilted, claustrophobic and numbingly pretentious tale about an aging widower revisiting his past." I think she's way off-base, but click here to read the rest of her review.

What does "Sarsaparilla" mean? Click here to find out.

Salon has just initiated a series of travel guides devoted to the literature of places, and Banville contributed the section on Ireland. Read it here.

--Marshal Zeringue