Overview

"The acclaimed, award-winning novelist takes us on some of his most memorable journeys in this revelatory collection of travel essays that spans the globe, from the Caribbean to Scotland to the Himalayas. Now in his mid-seventies, Russell Banks has indulged his wanderlust for more than half a century. ""Since childhood, I've longed for escape, for rejuvenation, for wealth untold, for erotic and narcotic and sybaritic fresh starts, for high romance, mystery, and intrigue,"" he writes in this compelling anthology. The longing for escape has taken him from the ""bright green islands and turquoise seas"" of the Caribbean islands to peaks in the Himalayas, the Andes, and beyond. In Voyager, Russell Banks, a lifelong explorer, shares highlights from his travels: interviewing Fidel Castro in Cuba; motoring to a hippie reunion with college friends in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; eloping to Edinburgh, with his fourth wife, Chase; driving a sunset orange metallic Hummer down Alaska's Seward Highway. In each of these remarkable essays, Banks considers his life and the world. In Everglades National Park this ""perfect place to time-travel,"" he traces his own timeline. ""I keep going back, and with increasingly clarity I see more of the place and more of my past selves. And more of the past of the planet as well."" Recalling his trips to the Caribbean in the title essay, ""Voyager,"" Banks dissects his relationships with the four women who would become his wives. In the Himalayas, he embarks on a different quest of self-discovery. ""One climbs a mountain not to conquer it, but to be lifted like this away from the earth up into the sky,"" he explains. Pensive, frank, beautiful, and engaging, Voyager brings together the social, the personal, and the historical, opening a path into the heart and soul of this revered writer."

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9781504736398

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Reviews

Acclaimed fiction writer Banks turns an able hand to nonfiction in this expansive, elegiac reflection on the pleasures and deceptions of travel...In the best of these pieces, his clarity of vision and muscular prose are as transporting as a mountain ascent. -- Kirkus Reviews Fans of Banks' exceptional fiction and all readers enamored of travelogues will clamor aboard this compact, gusto-filled, retrospective anthology...Banks' warm, probing intellect guides readers on thoughtful journeys whatever the destination...Readers will be hard put to find a more engaging travel companion. -- Booklist (starred review) The ten introspective essays collected in this volume explore their author's emotional geography as much as the far-flung lands he visits...Banks' descriptions are visually evocative, and his eye for detail is sharpened by the near-spiritual resonance that his travel destinations have for him...Banks makes a magnificent tour guide for landscapes both within and without. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Author Information

Russell Banks, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, is 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 has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Common Wealth Award for Literature. He lives in upstate New York and Miami, Florida. Mark Bramhall has won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration, more than thirty AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has repeatedly been named by AudioFile magazine and Publishers Weekly among their Best Voices of the Year. He is also an award-winning actor whose acting credits include off-Broadway, regional, and many Los Angeles venues as well as television, animation, and feature films. He has taught and directed at the American Academy of Dramatic Art.

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