Russell Banks

A dazzling tapestry of love and faith, memory and imagination, The Magic Kingdom questions what it means to look back and accept ones place in history. With an expert eye and stunning vision, Russell Banks delivers a wholly captivating portrait of a man navigating Americana and the passage of time. In 1971, a property speculator named Harley Mann begins recording his life story onto a reel-to-reel machine. Reflecting on his childhood, he recounts that after his fathers sudden death, his family migrated down to Floridas swamplands - mere miles away from the future Disney World - to join a community of Shakers. Led by Elder John, a generous man with a mysterious past, the colony devoted itself to labor, faith, and charity, rejecting all temptations that lay beyond the property. Though this way of life initially saved his family from complete ruin, when Harley began falling in love with Sadie Pratt, a consumptive patient living on the grounds, his loyalty to the Shakers and their conservative worldview grew strained and, ultimately, broke. As Harley dictates his story across more than half a century - meditating on youth, Floridas everchanging landscape, and the search for an American utopia - the truth about Sadie, Elder John, and the Shakers comes to light, clarifying the past and present alike.

One of Americas most prestigious writers, Russell Banks is a literary icon whose works probe the deepest recesses of American life. His profound and resonant stories of the lives of ordinary Americans have appeared regularly in anthologies and collections, including The Best American Short Stories. Reminiscent of Don DeLillo and Raymond Carver, this collection of twelve short works showcases a master at the peak of his intuitive powers. As he did in his haunting, classic works The Sweet Hereafter, Rule of the Bone and Lost Memory of Skin, Banks explores provocative themes with pathos and sharp insight. Each of the stories in this powerful collection demonstrates the range of his narrative virtuosity and a startlingly panoramic vision of humanity which recalls the moral sweep of John Steinbecks writing. A Permanent Member of the Family is a stunning addition to the canon of a writer whose great works resonate with such heart and soul (New York Times).

Dans ces nouvelles pétries d'une sorte de conscience de classe tranquille et obstinée, on retrouvera des paysages et des thèmes chers à Russell Banks, et notamment les trahisons dont parents et e

One of America's most prestigious writers, Russell Banks is a literary icon whose works probe the deepest recesses of American life. His profound and resonant stories of the lives of ordinary Americans have appeared regularly in anthologies and collections, including The Best American Short Stories. Reminiscent of Don DeLillo and Raymond Carver, this collection of twelve short works showcases a master at the peak of his intuitive powers. As he did in his haunting, classic works The Sweet Hereafter, Rule of the Bone and Lost Memory of Skin, Banks explores provocative themes with pathos and sharp insight. Each of the stories in this powerful collection demonstrates the range of his narrative virtuosity and a startlingly panoramic vision of humanity which recalls the moral sweep of John Steinbeck's writing. A Permanent Member of the Family is a stunning addition to the canon of a writer 'whose great works resonate with such heart and soul' (New York Times).

July, 1936. It is the height of the Depression, and the looming threat of Fascism is spreading across Europe. And somewhere high above the Adirondack mountains, beautiful and doomed, floats the vast Hindenburg airship. Vanessa Cole is the stunning debutante daughter of the famous brain surgeon Carter Cole. Notorious for her scandalous affairs with the rich and famous, she has returned to her parents' home in upstate New York after the collapse of her second marriage. Rumours are rife as the family gathers to celebrate the 4th of July at the rustic but elegant Adirondack Camp deep in their privately-owned wilderness, The Reserve. This scene of luxury and privilege is disturbed by the arrival of the internationally famous painter and political radical, Jordan Groves, who brazenly lands his bi-plane on the pristine Second Lake. Groves, celebrated as much for his leftist politics, Hemingwayesque exploits and romantic conquests as for his art, is easy prey for Vanessa Cole's blend of electrifying charm and destructiveness. But in order to protect his two young sons and his marriage, already made fragile by his years of compulsive infidelity, he must try to keep his distance.Especially when it becomes clear that Vanessa carries a deeply scarring family secret. The Reserve explores what happens when powerful personalities from opposite ends of the social spectrum begin to break the rules. Part scandalous love story, part murder mystery, it is a gripping, exhilarating novel from one of America's finest writers.

Hannah Musgrave, integrante de un grupo político clandestino, debe huir de Estados Unidos y busca asilo en Liberia, donde conoce a un mienbro del Gobierno, se casa con él y forma una familia feliz. Sin embargo, cuando estalla el sangriento conflicto entre las tropas gubernamentales y las milicias rebeldes, Hannah se enfrenta al dilema de abandonar a su familia o perecer con ella en la inminente guerra civil.

An addictively readable story of lives lived under the encroaching shadow of WWII. Russel Banks' work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes and

Russell Banks se ha convertido en el americano blanco vivo más importante del mapa literario oficial, un escritor del que nosotros, como lectores y escritores, podemos realmente aprender, y cuyos libros nos ayudan y nos invitan a cambiar.

Hannah Musgrave - enigmatic, tough, middle aged - has lived many lives. A member of the terrorist group The Weathermen in the 60s, she was once a hardened radical, both sexually and politically. Fleeing from the FBI, she settles in Liberia, where she marries a politician and becomes a mother and wife. But Hannah remains removed from her life in Africa, even from her husband and three sons. It is only the chimpanzees in the sanctuary which she develops that truly touch her. Liberia, in the meantime, is a country waiting to explode. As a bloody war erupts Hannah is on the run again.This time though the past won't disappear. Reminiscent of the novels of Greene and Conrad, The Darling is big, bold, utterly compelling storytelling.

" C'était l'acte le plus bizarre, le plus imprévu que j'avais jamais accompli, et malgré le grand frisson de plaisir que j'en éprouvais, j'étais terrifié. Je n'avais aucune raison d'agir ainsi, j'y étais seulement contraint par une force intérieure. " Au bord d'une route qui traverse le continent, à la croisée des chemins de vie, hommes et femmes peuvent faire une rencontre inattendue, vivre un instant différent qui changera leur vision du monde. Les personnages des nouvelles de Russell Banks reviennent sur ces moments particuliers où une petite entaille dans le quotidien pétrifié fut comme un embrayage, un détonateur. La jeune barmaid frappée par la foudre, l'homme d'âge mûr qui revient sur les lieux de son passé, les divorcés, les mariés, tous connaîtront un moment de grâce. Et si, au milieu de l'immensité de la complexité humaine, les êtres ne voulaient qu'essayer de se retrouver ?.

A mature and masterful work of contemporary fiction from a great American writer Suspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, a young man must create a life for himself in the wake of incarc

Alternando las peripecias existenciales de sus dos protagonistas (un americano medio que quiere cambiar de vida para enriquecerse espiritualmente, y una haitiana analfabeta que llega a Estados Unidos huyendo de la pobreza), esta novela constituye una radiografia magistral de la Norteamerica actual, contada con rabia, compasion y una extraordinaria capacidad para plasmar las motivaciones que mueven a los personajes. La impactante intensidad de los retratos humanos, la implacable denuncia de las trampas del sueño americano , sumergen al lector en una experiencia emocional de la que no puede zafarse. Considerado como uno de los principales maestros de la literatura estadounidense actual, Russell Banks consigue plasmar en esta novela la deriva moral de una sociedad y de un modo de vida dominados por el individualismo y el afan materialista.

En 1972, una bomba del IRA vuela el coche de un anciano industrial fabricante de armas. El muerto es Robert Beech, superviviente de la Primera Guerra Mundial y padre de Harry Beech, un celebre reportero grafico y testigo de algunos de los mayores horrores de la historia contemporanea. Harry comenzo su carrera fotografiando desde el aire las ciudades alemanas bombardeadas hacia el final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y despues ha recorrido el mundo y hecho fotografias en el Congo, en el Sinai y en Vietnam, donde obtuvo algunas de sus imagenes mas famosas. Pero cuando Harry ve a su padre destrozado a la puerta de su propia casa y en un gesto automatico busca su camara fotografica, comienza a darse cuenta de en que se ha convertido. Puede que el no sea ese "historiador objetivo" que siempre imagino y que la camara no sea mas que el sustituto de las armas que otros disparan, de esas armas que producen las fabricas de su padre. Diez años despues, cuando ha abandonado su carrera como fotografo de horrores y se ha consagrado a la fotografia aerea, en visperas de su matrimonio con una mujer mucho menor que el y cuando Gran Bretaña comienza la guerra de las Malvinas, Harry hace balance de su vida y retrocede hasta su infancia, marcada muy tempranamente por la tragedia. Y al otro lado