JOHN BANVILLE (b.1945)
Shroud. London: Picador, 2002.
First edition, second printing, signed by the author and inscribed with a quotation from the novel’s final paragraph: ‘Why should I have life and she have none?’. The text itself remains unannotated, a decision which Banville explains in a typed and signed statement that is loosely inserted, in which he writes of his books: ‘I cannot bear to read one, and the very thought of them makes me feel queasy. There they stand, in all their awfulness, the inexpungible evidence of my infamy. When I am compelled to glance back at something I have written, for reference or to verify something, all I see are the slips, the flaws, the failures of nerve, the missed opportunities…’

Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt, pictorial dust jacket.