Lost Memory of Skin

The opening pages of Lost Memory of Skin are the most electrifying I've read in a while (Sunday Times)

Banks is one of the United States' bravest, most daring writers (Irish Times)

Russell Banks tackles hard subjects with verve and courage, and Lost Memory of Skin takes us into the dark side of the dark side. Five stars. (Margaret Atwood, New York Times bestselling author)

The uncompromising moral voice of our time (Michael Ondaatje)

If you've never read Russell Banks it's time you acquired the habit (Elmore Leonard)

Of the many writers working in the great tradition today, one of the best is Russell Banks. (Jonathan Franzen)

We live in perilous, creepy times. We toy recklessly with brand-new capacities for ruination. We bring the most human impulses to the least human means of expressing them, and we may not see the damage we do until it becomes irrevocable. Mr. Banks, whose great works resonate with such heart and soul, brings his full narrative powers to bear on illuminating this still largely unexplored new terrain (Janet Maslin New York Times 2011-09-25)

Banks is one of those precious writers like Twain or Salinger who creates a voice so wonderfully real that the experience of reading them is like a conversation with an old friend (Sunday Times)

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)

I trust his portrait of America more than any other-the burden of it, the need for it, the hell of it. (Michael Ondaatje)