Cloudsplitter, Russell Banks
Cloudsplitter, Russell Banks
1 Rating(s)
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Cloudsplitter
A Novel

Author: Russell Banks

Narrator: Pete Larkin

Unabridged: 29 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/12/2013

Synopsis

""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 TimesA 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.

About Russell Banks

Russell Banks, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, was 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 he received numerous prizes and awards, including the Common Wealth Award for Literature. He died in January 2023 at the age of eighty-two.  

Reviews

Goodreads review by Krok Zero on October 24, 2010

Finally finished this ginormous tome, after dipping in and out of it for months. I have mixed feelings. Subject matter's fascinating, of course: radical abolitionist and Christian fundamentalist John Brown raises his family to be a cult of anti-slavery soldiers, culminating in the failed attempt at......more

Goodreads review by Chris on April 16, 2022

Absolutely stunning reading experience. My mom bought me this book in 1999. I was twenty four years old, living in Atlanta, and I was doing a ton of drugs and was a wild yahoo. I remember asking myself how mature did she think I was. I also knew I could not at the time give this book the respect it......more

Goodreads review by Larry on July 13, 2017

It took me three years to read this book. But really it said on the shelf for a good chunk of that time until I finally admitted that I was going to have to get the audible book to finish it off. And so I did. This is a long book. Not three years long but pretty long. And like is often the case with......more

Goodreads review by Snotchocheez on October 18, 2010

"Cloudsplitter", a fictional novel about the the abolitionist John Brown, is as painful to review as it is (at times) to read. Clearly this 750+ page behemoth is a labor of love for author Russell Banks: as exhaustive and as detailed as the events in John Brown's life are depicted, you can't help bu......more

Goodreads review by Wilhelmina on May 14, 2011

I'm between a four and a five star rating, but I'll go for the five. This book was an amazing ride. As long a book as this was, I never wanted to stop reading.......more

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