Lost Memory of Skin - Softcover

Banks, Russell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062088858 ISBN 13: 9780062088857

Publisher: Harperluxe, 2011

Synopsis

"Like our living literary giants Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon, Russell Banks is a great writer wrestling with the hidden secrets and explosive realities of this country."
--Cornel West

"Of the many writers working in the great tradition today, one of the best is Russell Banks."
--New York Times

Lost Memory of Skin is a provocative novel of spiritual and moral redemption from Russell Banks, the author of Affliction, Rule of the Bone, Continental Drift, Cloudsplitter, and other acclaimed masterworks of contemporary American fiction. Uncompromising and complex, Lost Memory of Skin is the story of The Kid, a young sex offender recently released from prison and forced to live beneath a South Florida causeway. When The Professor, a man of enormous intellect and appetite, takes The Kid under his wing, his own startling past will cause upheavals in both of their worlds. At once lyrical, witty, and disturbing, Banks's extraordinary novel showcases his abilities as a world-class storyteller as well as his incisive understanding of the dangerous contradictions and hypocrisies of modern American society.

About this title

Review

"Russell Banks's work presents without falsehood and with tough affection the uncompromising moral voice of our time... I trust his portraits of America more than any other--the burden of it, the need for it, the hell of it."--Michael Ondaatje

"Like our living literary giants Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon, Russell Banks is a great writer wrestling with the hidden secrets and explosive realities of this country."--Cornel West

"Lost Memory of Skin should be required reading for anyone interested in fixing the country's broken criminal justice system...Banks, in his latest novel, takes an unflinching look at people at their worst and manages to turn it into art."--Associated Press

"Among contemporary writers giving voice to America's beleaguered working class, Russell Banks may have no peer...this oddly unsettling, beautifully crafted novel...raise[s] fascinating issues."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Banks reveals the two [characters] with tenderness and trenchant wit, in a story that, not surprisingly, plumbs the depth of human despair and resilience. If that prowess is predictable, Skin is bound to leave you shaken and strangely reassured."--USA Today

"A ompelling story... one of those rare, strange, category-defying fictions that grabs hold of you... It's hard to shake it off. And even when you do, it leaves a mark."--Chicago Tribune

"[It] is a pleasure to see [Banks'] gift turned to big, semisurreal characters. The grand, rambling examination of guilt and blame takes place against a ravishingly bleak backdrop, lyrically described, while each revelation of character is like a quiet explosion."--Time Out New York

"Mr. Banks knows plot, and incorporates intriguing complications to keep the novel building power all the way to the end."--Pittsburg Post-Gazette

"Russell Banks really does know how to pull his readers into a dark, dark world only to deliver us into the light."--Boston Globe

"One of our finest novelists gives voice to the unspeakable...[A] compelling story"--O, the Oprah Magazine

Book Description

A mature and masterful work of contemporary fiction from a great American writer.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harperluxe
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0062088858
• ISBN 13: 9780062088857
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 635