The Relation of My Imprisonment

By Russell Banks

Book Overview

An Omnibus Edition of Three Classic Early Novels from the Critically Acclaimed Author of Cloudsplitter and Affliction

"Banks has skillfully used his repertoire of contemporary techniques to write a novel that is classically American--a dark, but sometimes funny, romance with echoes of Poe and Melville." -- Washington Post

"A marvelously written little book, fascinatingly intricate, yet deceptively simple. Well worth reading more than once." -- New York Times Book Review

Family Life: Russell Banks's first novel is an adult fairy tale of a royal family in a mythical contemporary kingdom where the myriad dramas of domesticity blend with an outrageous slew of murders, mayhem, coups, debauches, world tours, and love in all guises, transcendent or otherwise.

Hamilton Stark: This tale of a solitary, boorish, misanthropic New Hampshire pipe fitter--the sole inhabitant of the house from which he evicted his own mother--is at once a compelling meditation on identity and a thoroughly engaging story of life on the cold edge of New England.

The Relation of My Imprisonment: Utilizing a form invented by imprisoned seventeenth-century Puritan divines--an utterly sincere and detailed, if highly artificial, recounting of great suffering--Banks's novel is a remarkably inventive, lovingly good-humored argument, exploration, and map of the caged religious mind.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060976802
• ISBN13: 9780060976804
• Release Date: March 1996
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

An interesting book, especially as a work of SF

By SF I mean speculative fiction. This is an alternate history, where an entire religion has sprung up around the worship of the dead. Banks has invented a Bible and theology that's highly interesting, and this book is worth reading for just his creation of an interesting world.The book itself is a form of Puritan works, sent by the jailed practitioners to the congregation. Banks manages to capture the austere yet somehow elaborate Puritan method of writing, while at the same time keeping the book interesting for modern readers.The only point I'm really not clear on is...well...his point. This is obviously intended as some sort of allegory; why go to the lengths he did just for his own amusement? But I'm not sure WHAT this allegory is about? Email any suggestions, I'm genuinely curious as to theories.