William John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas, and screenwriter. He also had a 30-year career working in the Irish newspaper industry and served as literary editor of The Irish Times from 1988 until 1999.
Beginning with Christine Falls, published in 2006, Banville has written crime fiction under the pen name Benjamin Black. He writes his Benjamin Black crime fiction much more quickly than he composes his literary novels.[33] He appreciates his work as Black as a craft, while as Banville he is an artist. He considers crime writing, in his own words, as being "cheap fiction".
