John Banville, born in Wexford, Ireland in 1945, is a novelist, literary reviewer, screenwriter and under the name Benjamin Black, the author of six books of crime fiction. His novels include The Book of Evidence (1989), Ghosts (1993), The Untouchable (1997), Eclipse (2002), The Sea (2005) for which he was awarded the Booker Prize, and his latest, The Infinities (2009). His many awards include the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1975 for his novel, Doctor Copernicus, an Irish Book Award in 2006 for The Sea, and the Franz Kafka Prize in 2011.