American writer Russell Banks is dead
American writer Russell Banks in 2007 during the “Amazing Traveler” book festival in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
AFP - THONY BELIZAIRE
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
American writer Russel Banks died on Sunday January 8 at the age of 82 in New York State.
He is the author of around twenty novels and collections of short stories, including
De Beaux Lendemains
or
American Darling
.
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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
Continents Adrift
and
Cloudsplitter
has “
passed away peacefully at his home in upstate New York
,” writer Joyce Carol Oates announced Sunday morning.
“
All of his work was exceptional
,” she praised 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 plumber from Massassuchetts,
Russell Banks
first imagined himself as a painter, dropped out of university and at the age of 18, 20, in the late 1950s, he traveled the United States doing stop, like a Jack Kérouac whose novel
Sur la route
has just been 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
De Beaux Lendemains
, a lawyer arrives in a village where many children have perished in a bus accident, he turns the inhabitants against each other, awakening the buried pains of deep America.
The book will be adapted for the cinema by Atom Egoyan.
In
American Darling
, a young American revolutionary flees to Liberia and questions her commitment, making this a very great book about America and her 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 Refuge Cities of North America, cities that are committed to welcoming writers in exile.
►Also read: On the paths of the world, with Russell Banks
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Literature
United States