''Doctor Copernicus'' is a novel by

John Banville William John Banville (born 8 December 1945) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W. B. Yeats and Henry ...

, first published in

1976 Events January * January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force. * January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea. * January 11 – The 1976 ...

. "A richly textured tale" about

Nicolaus Copernicus Nicolaus Copernicus (; pl, Mikołaj Kopernik; gml, Niklas Koppernigk, german: Nikolaus Kopernikus; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formulated ...

, it won that year's

James Tait Black Memorial Prize The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Uni ...

. ''Doctor Copernicus'' contains four sections. The first two focus on the subject's life until about the age of 36. In the third, Copernicus's aide Rheticus narrates how he convinced Copernicus to publish ''

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium ''De revolutionibus orbium coelestium'' (English translation: ''On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres'') is the seminal work on the heliocentric theory of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) of the Polish Renaissance. The book, ...

''. The fourth focuses on the great scientist's death. Thirty years after it first appeared, Brian McIlroy praised ''Doctor Copernicus'' for its "great intellectual ambition." Linda Hutcheon, in ''A Poetics of Postmodernism'', wrote that it is a " historiographic metafiction."

References

1976 novels Cultural depictions of Nicolaus Copernicus Historical novels Novels by John Banville Novels set in the 16th century Secker & Warburg books {{1970s-hist-novel-stub