Description: "Russell Banks's work presents without falsehood and with tough affection the uncompromising moral voice of our time. You find the craziness of false dreams, the political inequalities, and somehow the sliver of redemption. I trust his portraits of America more than any other--the burden of it, the need for it, the hell of it." -- Michael Ondaatje "Russell Banks's twentieth-century Liberia is as hellish a place as Joseph Conrad's nineteenth-century Congo. The only creatures that behave with humanity are the apes. A dark and disturbing book." -- J. M. Coetzee "Banks's novel is a vivid account of a time of terror, exposing the secrets of the soul." -- O magazine "A former American radical returns to war-torn Liberia to look for the sons she left behind ten years earlier. In this disquieting book--something of a thematic sequel to Cloudsplitter, his 1988 novel about avenging abolitionist John Brown--Banks takes on Charles Taylor, Western idealism, and the moral consequences of looking the other way." -- Details "Powerful and evocative." -- Newsweek "Banks creates a heroine every bit as complex and flawed as someone out of Jane Austen." -- Hartford Courant "The real achievement here is the creation of Hannah; she's one of the few recent literary characters I expect I'll remember, and the book itself is the most engaging one I've read all year." -- Charlotte Observer "Extraordinary...Hannah offers a first person narrative so moving, so pitiless, so rare in contemporary fiction that it embodies Aristotelian catharsis... Banks is that rare epic novelist." -- Baltimore Sun "Hannah's story shows why Banks ranks among our boldest artists." -- Boston Globe "Admirable, compelling, always surprising and never clichd." -- New York Times Book Review "In The Darling, he is working at full strength, and his readers are in his debt." -- Washington Post Book World "Once again, he has produced a novel that is searing, demanding and unforgettable." -- Newsweek "Banks has written a novel that is utterly accessible, forcefully wrought and undeniably passionate." -- Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers "Banks' mastery of his material makes this a compelling and important book." -- Orlando Sentinel "Extraordinary. . . Banks is the rare epic novelist." -- Virginian Pilot

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