Shroud (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: John Banville
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 2003
- Setting: Turin, Italy
- Principal Characters: Axel Vander, Cass Cleave, Franco Bartoli, Kristina Kovacs
- Genres: Long fiction, Novel
- Subjects: Europe or Europeans, Literature, Twenty-first century, World War II, Jews or Jewish life, Anti-Semitism, Identity, Nazism or Nazis, Italy or Italians, Western Europe or western Europeans, Students or student life, Euthanasia or right to die, Jews and Gentiles, Old age or elderly people
- Locales: Turin, Italy
Axel Vander is an elderly survivor of the Nazi purges. Having relocated to the United States, he teaches at a university in Arcady, California, and has a formidable reputation as one of literature’s most controversial theorists. Vander heads off to Turin for a conference and to meet a woman who claims she has uncovered secrets from a past he prefers to keep hidden.
Cass Cleave, a character reprised from John Banville’s previous novel, Eclipse (2000), appears as an emotionally ravaged graduate student who poses no deliberate threat to Vander. Her appearance, however,...
[The entire page is 2077 words long]
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