Cloudsplitter (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Russell Banks
- First Published: 1998
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1832-c. 1900
- Setting: New York, Kansas, Virginia, England, and Belgium
- Principal Characters: John Brown, Owen Brown, John Brown, Fred Brown, Lyman Epps, Susan Epps, Gerrit Smith, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sarah Peabody
- Genres: Long fiction, Historical fiction
- Subjects: History, Parents and children, Love or romance, Abolitionists, Slavery or slaves, Revolutions, Religion, Poverty or poor people, Fathers
- Locales: Virginia, New York, England, Kansas, Belgium
Known primarily as a writer of contemporary working-class fiction, Russell Banks seems to have departed from his established metier by producing a prodigious work of historical fiction. Actually, Banks’s change of subject and genre is more apparent than real. Along with an abiding interest in questions of social class, Banks has been equally fascinated by America’s tortured racial politics. Thus, John Brown is a natural choice of topic. Beyond his iconic status as an enduring and still highly controversial bellwether of race relations, Brown attracted Banks’s attention for more...
[The entire page is 2112 words long]
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