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

"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

"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