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The Planets is a gorgeous exploration of our near celestial neighbours

For readers who love tales of worlds beyond our own both fiction and non-fiction, check out some space themed titles during Irish Astronomy Weeks!

For readers who love seeing stories leap from page to screen, these titles offer a perfect reading list before (or after!) the ceremony.

As part of the Dublin One Book 2026 celebrations, our Reader Services team have put the spotlight on four standout titles from John Banville’s thirty-one novels. There are plenty of delights to be found in the Banville backlist. We’ve set aside his best-known works, The Book of Evidence and The Sea, but, if you want to explore further, then the following are highly recommended.

Flesh is an unflinching (and often unflattering) look at the life of a young man. It is an absorbing novel written in a spare, unobtrusive style about loneliness, disappointment and suffering and what they can do to a person.