Affliction

"Banks has taken on a profound theme, the ruinous and awful affliction of violence that seems to live like a secret blood-disease handed down in men like Wade. . . . He turns it into a living art that can bring recognition and awe." — Los Angeles Book Review

"A masterwork of contemporary American fiction" (Chicago Tribune) from one of the most acclaimed and important writers of our time

Wade Whitehouse is an improbable protagonist for a tragedy. A well-digger and policeman in a bleak New Hampshire town, he is a former high-school star gone to beer fat, a loner with a mean streak. It is a mark of Russell Banks's artistry and understanding that Wade comes to loom in one's mind as a blue-collar American Everyman afflicted by the dark secret of the macho tradition. Told by his articulate, equally scarred younger brother, Wade's story becomes as spellbinding and inexorable as a fuse burning its way to the dynamite.

Wade Whitehouse is an improbable protagonist for a tragedy. A well-digger and policeman in a bleak New Hampshire town, he is a former high-school star gone to beer fat, a loner with a mean streak. It is a mark of Russell Banks' artistry and understanding that Wade comes to loom in one's mind as a blue-collar American Everyman afflicted by the dark secret of the macho tradition. Told by his articulate, equally scarred younger brother, Wade's story becomes as spellbinding and inexorable as a fuse burning its way to the dynamite.

"Banks has taken on a profound theme, the ruinous and awful affliction of violence that seems to live like a secret blood-disease handed down in men like Wade....He turns it into a living art that can bring recognition and awe." - Los Angeles Book Review

"A compelling portrait of a man. . . at once moving and disturbing." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Magnificently convincing . . . beautifully sustained, suspenseful." - New York Times Book Review

"Russell Banks is a writer of extraordinary power." - Gail Caldwell, Boston Globe

"What makes Affliction remarkable is that Banks make a cowardly, violent man profoundly understandable, as Dreiser did with Clyde Griffiths in An American Tragedy." - Newsweek