EVERYTHING is very plain and modern now,” a dying man tells the author Jack London roughly halfway through Minds of Winter, warning the writer against the gothic, supernatural excesses of the yarn he is spinning in a hospital ward.

BOOKER Prize winner John Banville was further honoured last night when he scooped the top award at Writers’ Week, in Listowel, Co Kerry.

THREE Irish writers are named in the long list for this year’s £50,000 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.