Cloudsplitter

"Deeply affecting. . . . Like the best novels of Nadine Gordimer, it makes us appreciate the dynamic between the personal and the political, the public and the private, and the costs and causes of radical belief." -- New York Times

A triumph of the imagination and a masterpiece of modern storytelling, Cloudsplitter is narrated by the enigmatic Owen Brown, last surviving son of America's most famous and still controversial political terrorist and martyr, John Brown.

Deeply researched, brilliantly plotted, and peopled with a cast of unforgettable characters both historical and wholly invented, Cloudsplitter is dazzling in its re-creation of the political and social landscape of our history during the years before the Civil War, when slavery was tearing the country apart. But within this broader scope, Russell Banks has given us a riveting, suspenseful, heartbreaking narrative filled with intimate scenes of domestic life, of violence and action in battle, of romance and familial life and death that make the reader feel in astonishing ways what it is like to be alive in that time.

Author: Russell Banks
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 01/27/1999
Pages: 768
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 8.03h x 5.37w x 1.81d
ISBN: 9780060930868

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 8.3
Point Value: 48
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 42957 / Cloudsplitter


Award: PEN/Faulkner Award - Nominee


Review Citation(s):
New York Times 02/07/1999 pg. 24
New York Times 06/06/1999 pg. 52
Publishers Weekly Best Books 01/01/1998 pg. 39
Booklist 02/15/2000 pg. 1078
Booklist 04/01/2000 pg. 1442
Newsweek 03/17/2008 pg. 14

About the Author
Banks, Russell: -

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.