Banville paints an interesting picture of Copernicus: he is not physically brave, but he has a dignity about him, and as he ascends the Catholic hierarchy he stands up to nobility (Albert, Duke of Prussia rampaging with his Teutonic Knights) and bishops who want him to let go of his housekeeper/cousin. On the other hand, as he ages Copernicus becomes more reticent about publishing his heliocentric model of the solar system/universe--it is not clear if it is because he is worried about the blowback (although according to this novel, a lot of Catholic and Lutheran elites were receptive to the idea) or because he was worried about getting everything right.

Banville sets Copernicus in Renaissance-era Italy/Poland/Ermland, but it might as well just be medieval Europe as it seemed like a miserable place--although elites are becoming more receptive to overturning old dogmas about how the universe works, they really do not care at all about the suffering endured by the non-nobles. I suppose the Western world currently has a lot more in common with this milieu than we'd like to think. ( )

En una época de mentes cerradas en la que reinaban el caos y una concepción errónea del universo aceptada desde hacía siglos, unos pocos hombres se atrevieron a cuestionar esa visión, decididos a descubrir y revelar cómo funcionaba el mundo.

En Copérnico, novela ganadora del James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Banville evoca la vida de un hombre tímido, desconcertado por las conspiraciones que se desatan a su alrededor y en busca de una verdad que hizo añicos la visión medieval del universo.

En Kepler, merecedora del Premio de Ficción de The Guardian, sigue los pasos de uno de los mayores matemáticos y astrónomos, cuyo afán por trazar una carta de las estrellas y los planetas revolucionaría la visión del cosmos que regía la Europa del Renacimiento.

En La carta de Newton, un historiador contemporáneo se retira al campo para terminar su biografía de Isaac Newton, pero su libro entra en un bucle cuando se obsesiona con el colapso nervioso que el gran físico y matemático británico sufrió en el verano de 1693 y con la familia que le alquila la cabaña de verano.

Finalmente, con Mefisto Banville da una vuelta de tuerca al mito del doctor Fausto y el precio que el científico y el artista deben pagar por su vocación.

Cuatro obras ineludibles del premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras reunidas por primera vez en un solo volumen.

A Rating of 4.6. Weaving what little is known about his life, John Banville tells the story of the life of the man who gave re-birth to
the heliocentric theory. Banville gives us a Copernicus who lived a
hard scrabble life right till his death. Looking forward to reading the
other two books in the trilogy. ( )

I’d only read one book by John Banville before: his celebrated novel The Sea, which I read on a balmy summer day, propped up against a grassy bank by the Serpentine in Hyde Park. It was an occasion when place and book complemented each other perfectly and I found myself lost in Banville’s heady, languid writing. When I stumbled across this book, I was delighted: not only because it gave me a chance to lose myself again, but because it’s always refreshing to find a book set in one of the less familiar periods of history. When you think of the ubiquity of Tudor, Roman or Victorian-set historical fiction, the first decades of the 16th century in Prussia, Poland and the Baltic states are relatively uncharted territory. I was also keen to find out a bit more about Copernicus, because I am aware of the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems only in the broadest sense and I hoped that the novel would make me better acquainted with the details of Copernicus’s theory...

For full details, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2013/04/07/dr-copernicus-john-banville/ ( )

VERY DISAPPOINTING. I DON'T KNOW WHY I FINISHED IT. I THOUGHT I LIKED JOHN BANVILLE, ( )