JOHN BANVILLE was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of eighteen novels, including The Book of Evidence, The Sea, which won the 2005 Man Booker Prize, the Quirke Series of crime novels under the pen name Benjamin Black, and the bestselling Snow, his first novel to feature Detective Inspector St John Strafford. Other major prizes he has won include the Franz Kafka Prize, the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature and the Prince of Asturias Award. He lives in Dublin.