ABOUT
THE BOOK

In The Untouchable, Victor Maskell, double agent and Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures, sits down to write his own testament following the public exposure of his life of espionage. Victor has been betrayed: after the announcement in the Commons, and the hasty revelation of his double (or quadruple) life of wartime spying, his photograph is in all the papers. His knighthood revoked and his post as curator of the Queen’s pictures terminated, Victor is left with a painful awareness of his age, and at the same time a strange feeling of rebirth, of being at the beginning of a new life. The Untouchable is an unforgettable and breathtakingly vivid picture of a life lived at the heart of this century. One of Ireland’s greatest living novelists, John Banville’s books have won many prizes and his novel Ghosts was shortlisted for the 1996 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.