John Banville interviewed by Antanas Sileika

John Banville is the author of 14 previous novels and has been the recipient of the Man Booker Prize – for his last novel, The Sea – the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Award, and a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. He was the literary editor of the Irish Times until 1999. Banville’s dazzling new novel, The Infinities, featuring a cast of both earthly and immortal beings, is a unique look at the terrible and wonderful plight of being human.

Rachel Harry was host and producer of BookTelevision’s flagship literary current events show The Word This Week, and has gone on to produce literary and arts programming for Canwest, CHUM, Bravo!, and CTV, most recently co-writing and producing a documentary special on the music industry for Canwest's E! Television.

Antanas Sileika is an author and literary critic, and the Artistic Director of the Humber School for Writers. His works include Dinner at the End of the World, Woman in Bronze and Buying on Time, which was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal and Toronto Book Award. His new novel, Underground, is forthcoming in Spring of 2011.

On a peaceful midsummer’s day in the Irish countryside, Adam Godley, a renowned theoretical mathematician, is dying. As the Godley family gathers at his bedside, a family of mischievous immortals – among them, Zeus, Pan, and Hermes, the genial and omniscient narrator – start to stir up trouble, to sometimes wildly unintended effect. Blissfully inventive and playful, rich in psychological insight and sensual detail, The Infinities is a unique look at the terrible and wonderful plight of being human.