The Book of Jamaica
Written by Russell Banks
Narrated by Norman Dietz
4/5
()
About this audiobook
""A truly excellent novel. . . . The morbidly fascinating little twists of human existence are all here: love, sex, life and death, beauty and horror—the works."" — Chicago Sun-Times
In The Book of Jamaica, Russell Banks explores the complexities of political life in the Caribbean and its ever-present racial conflicts.
His narrator, a thirty-five-year-old college professor from New Hampshire, goes to Jamaica to write a novel and soon becomes embroiled in the struggles between whites and Blacks. He is especially interested in an ancient tribe called the Maroons, descendants of the Ashanti, who had been enslaved by the Spanish and then fought the British in a hundred-year war. Despite this history of oppression, the Maroons have managed to maintain a relatively autonomous existence in Jamaica. Partly out of guilt and an intellectual sense of social responsibility, Banks's narrator gets involved in reuniting two clans who have been feuding for generations. Unfortunately, his attempt ends in disaster, and the narrator must deal with his feelings of alienation, isolation, and failure.
Russell Banks
Russell Banks published ten novels, six short story collections, and four poetry collections. His novels Cloudsplitter and Continental Drift were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Two of Banks's novels have been adapted for feature-length films, The Sweet Hereafter (winner of the Grand Prix and International Critics Prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival) and Affliction (which earned a 'Best Supporting Actor' Oscar for James Coburn). His work has won numerous awards, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, O. Henry and Best American Short Story Award, and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. One of America's most prestigious fiction writers, Russell Banks was president of the International Parliament of Writers and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He passed away in January 2023.
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Reviews for The Book of Jamaica
21 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bank's first "major" novel. This is a great story and a brilliant read from one of America's foremost novelists. Possibly a story about Errol Flynn.