Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 July 2010
Given a separable Banach space E, we construct an extremely non-complex Banach space (i.e. a space satisfying that ‖ Id + T2 ‖ = 1 + ‖ T2 ‖ for every bounded linear operator T on it) whose dual contains E* as an L-summand. We also study surjective isometries on extremely non-complex Banach spaces and construct an example of a real Banach space whose group of surjective isometries reduces to ±Id, but the group of surjective isometries of its dual contains the group of isometries of a separable infinite-dimensional Hilbert space as a subgroup.