Svět knihy 2019: John Banville
John Banville, Svět knihy 2019.
Prague’s International Book Fair and Festival, Svět knihy (Book World), was held between 9-12.5.2019. This year I had the pleasure of shooting for the festival. The guests of honor for 2019 were the countries of South America, and the great delegation was led by Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa. Also attending this year were Nobel Laureate Herta Müller, Booker Award winner John Banville, and the biggest star and almost surprise guest - Alejandro Jodorowsky.
William John Banville (born 8 December 1945) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W. B. Yeats and Henry James are the two real influences on his work.
Banville's work has led to many accolades, including the 1976 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the 2005 Booker Prize, the 2011 Franz Kafka Prize, the 2013 Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the 2014 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007, Italy made him a Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella d'Italia (essentially a knighthood) in 2017. He is a former member of Aosdána, having voluntarily relinquished the financial stipend in 2001 to another, more impoverished, writer.
Banville is considered a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He lives in Dublin.
