Doctor Copernicus

by John Banville

Overview

Sixteenth century Europe is teeming with change and controversy: wars are being waged by princes and bishops and the repercussions of Luther are being felt through a convulsing Germany. In a remote corner of Poland a modest canon is practicing medicine and studying the heavens, preparing a theory that will shatter the medieval view of the universe. In this astonishing work of historical imagination, John Banville offers a vivid portrait of a man of painful reticence, haunted by a malevolent brother and baffled by the conspiracies that rage around him and his ideas. For, in a world that is equal parts splendor and barbarism, an obscure cleric who seeks “the secret music of the universe” poses a most devastating threat.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679737995
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/28/1993
Series:	Vintage International Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	324,366
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He has been the recipient of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (1976), the Guardian Fiction Prize (1981), the Guinness Peat Aviation Book Award (1989), and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction (1997). He has been both shortlisted for the Booker Prize (1989) and awarded the Man Booker Prize (2005) as well as nominated for the Man Booker International Prize (2007). Other awards include the Franz Kafka Prize (2011), the Austrian State Prize for European Literature (2013), and the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature (2014). He lives in Dublin.

Table of Contents

What People are Saying About This

Don DeLillo

Banville writes a dangerous and clear-running prose and has grim gist of seeing people's souls.
—(Don DeLillo)

Editorial Reviews

These unusually fine biographical novels vivify Copernicus, the man who reshaped the medieval world view, and 16th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler, whose science was a means to pursue the nature of God. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly