Description
A brilliant, restless mind returns to the orbit of power and duty when Nicolaus Copernicus is drawn into the daily machinery of the Church—only to find that his true struggle is not with authority, but with the stubborn distance between what can be known and what can be proved. In this fictionalized account, Banville traces the slow, anguished shaping of a heliocentric vision as Copernicus negotiates evidence, doubt, and the costs of obsession. Blending historical imagination with intellectual rigor, the novel explores themes of inquiry versus certainty, the fragility of perception, and the private life of ideas. Written in Banville’s signature lyrical, formally attentive style, it stands as a work of “historiographic metafiction,” where the past is both reconstructed and questioned—inviting readers to consider how knowledge is made, narrated, and believed.
Available Editions
paperback
Books on Tape, Inc.
Published Sep 1, 1987
ISBN: 9780736612111
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Details
First Published
1976
Language
eng
Content Warnings
No content warnings identified.