John Banville: Live all you can  - you’ve no idea how quickly it goes

The Irish novelist and short story writer on his guiltiest pleasures and dream dinner party guests

Wexford-born John Banville is a philosophical novelist concerned with the nature of perception, the conflict between imagination and reality, and how we navigate the world as individuals.

John Banville grew up reading bestselling British detective novelists Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham. He welcomes the recent rise of female Irish crime writers, seeing them as “women standing up and taking their rightful place at the table”.

It’s a rainy afternoon and the 77-year-old is talking to me from his study in Howth where he’s just finished writing his next novel, “about a serial killer that can’t be stopped.”