Irish novelist, short story writer and screenwriter John Banville is presenting a “talk by and conversation with the author” at the Princess Grace Irish Library on Saturday.

The 20-minute talk, entitled Fiction and the Dream, will offer insights into the author’s life as a writer, to be followed by an open forum where he will encourage the audience to engage in a free-flowing conversation with him whether it be questions, criticisms, opinions or just a chat about his influences and thoughts.

Banville, a Wexford native, has been described as Proust’s heir, by way of Nabokov, though the author himself maintains his real influences are poet William Butler Yeats and novelist Henry James.

His latest published work, entitled Mrs Osmond, seems to verify this claim. The protagonist of the story is Isabel Archer, the heroine from James’s much-loved work The Portrait of a Lady and is the ongoing tale of her life, taking it up from where James left off.  

He is the recipient of the prestigious Man Booker Prize, the Austrian State Prize for Literature, the Kafka Prize and the Prince of Asturias Award and has written a series of crime novels under his pen-name, Benjamin Black.  

Copies of Mrs Osmond will be on sale after the talk and the author has offered to sign them for all who are interested. Entry is €10. To reserve a seat, email info@pgil.mc