The Relation of My Imprisonment: A Fiction - Softcover

Banks, Russell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060976802 ISBN 13: 9780060976804

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1996

Synopsis

"The Relation of My Imprisonment" is a work of fiction utilizing a form invented in the seventeenth century by imprisoned Puritan devines. Designed to be exemplary, works of this type were aimed at brethren outside the prison walls and functioned primarily as figurative dramatizations of the tests of faith all true believers must endure. These "relations, " framed by scripture and by a sermon explicating the text, were usually read aloud in weekly or monthly installments during religious services. Utterly sincere and detailed recountings of suffering, they were nonetheless highly artificial. To use the form self-consciously, as Russell Banks has done, is not to parody it so much as to argue good-humoredly with the mind it embodies, to explore and, if possible, to map the limits of that mind, the more intelligently to love it.

About this title

Review:

"This is a marvelously written little book, fascinatingly intricate, yet deceptively simple. Well worth reading more than once.""--New York Times Book Review"

About the Author:

Russell Banks, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, is one of America's most prestigious fiction writers, a past president of the International Parliament of Writers, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Common Wealth Award for Literature. He lives in upstate New York and Miami, Florida.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0060976802
• ISBN 13: 9780060976804
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128