Through chance, luck and choice, one man's life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London - in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and break our lives Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he becomes isolated, with his neighbour - a married woman - as his only companion. When a clandestine relationship begins between them, his life spirals out of control. As the years pass, István moves from the army to the circles of London's elite. His competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth win him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.
A man with a borrowed name steps from a flashy red sportscar—also borrowed—onto the estate of his youth. But all is not as it seems. There is a new family living in the drafty old house: the Godleys, descendants of the late, world-famous scientist Adam Godley, whose theory of existence threw the universe into chaos. And this mystery man, who has just completed a prison sentence, feels as if time has stopped, or was torn, or was opened in new and strange ways. He must now vie with the idiosyncratic Godley family, with their harried housekeeper who becomes his landlady, with the recently commissioned biographer of Godley Sr., and with a wealthy and beautiful woman from his past who comes bearing an unusual request.With sparkling intelligence and rapier wit, John Banville revisits some of his career's most memorable figures, in a novel as mischievous as it is brilliantly conceived. The Singularities occupies a singular space and will surely be one of his most admired works.