One Dublin One Book 2026

For the first time on the Faber list, a new edition of John Banville's classic debut crime novel, as his Dublin set series starring the Pathologist Quirke moves under his own name. ‘His control and pacing cannot be faulted, and the final outcome is almost unbearably moving.’ Michael Dibdin, The Guardian.

Quirke’s pathology department, set deep beneath 1950s Dublin, is his own gloomy realm: always quiet, always night, and always under his control. Until, late one evening, he stumbles across a body that should not be there. 

The investigation he opens uncovers a dark secret at the heart of the city’s high Catholic network – a secret with the power to shake his own family and everything he holds dear.

These six 1950s Dublin-set Quirke Mysteries precede his later Strafford & Quirke series and further deepen and enhance his supremely atmospheric portrayal of that time and place.

Over 200,000 copies sold of the top ten bestselling Strafford and Quirke series to date. 

John Banville was born in Wexford in 1945. He is the author of many novels, including The Book of Evidence, the 2005 Booker Prize-winning The Sea, Venetian Vespers and the bestselling Strafford and Quirke crime series, which has twice been shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger.

Faber is one of the world’s great independent publishing houses. Since it was founded in 1929, poetry has been at the heart of its publishing, with T. S. Eliot as the first Poetry Editor.

In every generation, Faber has sought to find the very best writers and are proud to publish the foremost voices in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, film and children’s books, from writers including Sylvia Plath, Samuel Beckett, Ted Hughes, William Golding, Kae Tempest, Seamus Heaney, P. D. James, John Banville, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Alan Bennett, Edna O’Brien, Simon Armitage, Sally Rooney, Emma Carroll, Kieran Larwood, Natasha Farrant and Natalie Diaz. 

Thirteen Nobel Laureates and six Booker Prize-winners have been published by Faber, with awards most recently for Kazuo Ishiguro and Anna Burns.

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