John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. He was born in Wexford, South-East Ireland, in 1945. He was educated to the secondary level but did not progress to university, despite his early hopes of pursuing a career as an artist or architect. Leaving education at 18, he worked as an airline clerk, taking advantage of discounted air travel to explore Greece and Italy. He subsequently moved to Dublin, working as a journalist and editor for The Irish Press and The Irish Times.

Banville’s first novel was published in 1971. He is the author of 21 novels, of which The Sea is the 14th. He is best known for his three trilogies of novels: the Revolutions Trilogy (1976-1982), which focuses on three great scientists, the Frames Trilogy (1989-1995), which anticipates The Sea in its focus on visual art and use of unreliable male first-person narrators (See: Literary Devices), and the Cleave Trilogy of mystery novels (2000-2012). Since 2006, Banville has published crime fiction under the pen name Benjamin Black.

In his highly lyrical prose style and his use of self-aware and self-absorbed unreliable first-person narrators, Banville has acknowledged an affinity for the authors Nabokov and Proust and the Irish authors Joyce and Beckett.