WASHINGTON: American novelist Russell Banks, whose work depicted the interior lives of those marginalized and at odds with social forces, has died at age 82.
Fellow author Joyce Carol Oates said in a Tweet on Sunday that Banks “passed away peacefully last night in his home in upstate (New York).”
Oates, who, like Banks, used to teach writing at Princeton University lauded his work saying “I loved Russell & loved his tremendous talent & magnanimous heart,” adding that “All his work is exceptional.”
Banks’s literary agent Ellen Levine said he died amid cancer, reported The New York Times.
His notable works include the novels “The Sweet Hereafter,” “Affliction,” “Continental Drift” and “Cloudsplitter” the latter two of which were Pulitzer Prize finalists.
Banks served as president of the International Parliament of Writers and also won the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature in 1995. Two of his works were also made into widely acclaimed films.
The one who wrote for the working-class
His protagonists were often blue-collar individuals, reflecting his own working-class upbringing with an alcoholic plumber father – whom he later said he both hated and adored. His characters faced the challenges of poverty, drug abuse, and class and racial issues.
Also politically active, Banks opposed the US military intervention in Iraq, and the intrusions of the post-9/11 Patriot Act. – APP
