1989 Booker Prize nominee. Evidence, a novel by one of the brightest representatives of modern Irish literature John Banville, is born as a result of a deep understanding and development of the best traditions of European confessional and philosophical prose. The crime of the main character is considered by the author as a dead end in the evolution of egocentric personality consciousness, and the punishment of the killer is a tragic reassessment of his own spiritual experience. The book is read as a confession of the mutinous intellect and sums up the peculiar result of its self-identification at the end of the 20th century. For all interested in modern foreign prose. “There is murder in The Evidence and there is a painting being stolen; but God forbid you should buy this novel as an evening detective or airplane reader. You will be very disappointed.... "Evidence" - antique, value, rarity, Kunstkamera exhibit, the novel is thin as cigarette paper . The game is not in the plot and not even in the style, but in the transformation of paper into canvas, a novel into a picture. It is written on behalf of the killer, who in broad daylight pulled from the private art gallery “Portrait of a lady with gloves” (XVII century, Rembrandt, Vermeer or Hals), took the first woman who was taken hostage, and then killed her and threw the picture Soon enough, he is arrested; in prison, he begins to write something like a confession. His manner of describing what happened is the main event of the novel; and the detective is phony; it is not a matter of murder.