num_pages: 405
description: A brilliant, engaging, and highly literate espionage-cum-existential novel, John Banville's The Untouchable concerns the suddenly-exposed double agent Victor Maskell, a character based on the real Cambridge intellectual elites who famously spied on the United Kingdom in the middle of the 20th century. But Maskell--scholar, adventurer, soldier, art curator, and more--respected and still living in England well past his retirement from espionage, looked like he was going to get away with it when suddenly, in his 70s and sick with cancer, he is unmasked. The question of why, and by whom is not as important for Maskell as the larger question of who finally he himself really is, why he spied in the first place, and whether his many-faceted existence adds up to an authentic life.
language: English
title: THE UNTOUCHABLE.
titlecomplete: THE UNTOUCHABLE.
characters: Victor Maskell
genres: Ireland, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Espionage, Literature, British Literature, Irish Literature, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 3699
awards: awardedAt: 852105600000
name: Whitbread Award
category: Novel, awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award, awardedAt: 852105600000
name: Lannan Literary Award
category: Fiction
publisher: Picador