American writer Russel Banks died on Sunday January 8 at the age of 82 in New York State. He is the author of some twenty novels and collections of short stories, including Beautiful tomorrows Where American Darling.
The American novelist Russell Banks, a great figure in contemporary literature, known for his portraits of the working class, died Saturday at the age of 82 from cancer. The author of Drifting Continents and Cloud Slayer is ” passed away peacefully at his home in upstate New York “, announced the writer Joyce Carol Oates Sunday morning. “ All of his work was exceptional “, she greeted on Twitter.
His origins marked both his work and his political commitment. Novelist, short story writer and poet, Russell Banks loved to tell the hardships of the working class through characters who struggle with poverty, drug addiction, class and race issues.
Son of a Massassuchetts plumber, Russell Banks First imagines himself as a painter, drops out of university and at the age of 18, 20, at the end of the 1950s, he criss-crosses the United States hitchhiking, like a Jack Kérouac including the novel On the road just published. From one city to another, Russell Banks spends more and more time in libraries and discovers his calling.
His heartbreaking books depict characters who are often modest, crushed by the weight of history or victims of the immorality of others. In Beautiful tomorrows, a lawyer arrives in a village where many children have died in a bus accident, he pits the inhabitants against each other, awakening the buried pain of deep America. The book will be adapted for the cinema by Atom Egoyan. In American Darlinga young American revolutionary flees to Liberia and questions her commitment, which makes this a very great book on America and its intimate relationship with Africa.
Russell Banks was also committed to many subjects: against the war in Iraq, for the rights of the Palestinians, or as president of the International Parliament of Writers, founded by Salman Rushdie. He was also at the origin of the association of North American Refuge Cities, cities that are committed to welcoming writers in exile.
►Also read: On the paths of the world, with Russell Banks