hor of The Sea re-creates the life of the Renaissance mathematical genius Johannes Kepler and his incredible drive to chart the orbits of the planets and the geometry of the universe.

Johannes Kepler, born in 1571 in southern Germany, was one of the world's greatest mathematicians and astronomers. The novel Kepler by John Banville brilliantly re-creates his life and his work, which laid the foundation of the universe even while he was being driven from exile to exile by religious and domestic strife. At the same time, it illuminates the harsh realities of the Renaissance world, rich in imaginative daring but rooted in poverty, squalor and the tyrannical power of emperors.

"What Banville writes is historically accurate, but his [are] a novelist's truth, and...a lover's prose." --Newsweek