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Published May 2016
288 pages
Genre: Travel & Adventure
Publication Information
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.
"Starred Review. Banks makes a magnificent tour guide for landscapes both within and without." - Publishers Weekly
"Banks' ecological warnings might strike even the most fervent environmentalist as rather apocalyptic, yet in the best of these pieces, his clarity of vision and muscular prose are as transporting as a mountain ascent." - Kirkus
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Robert Sargent Fay
Russell Banks was raised in New Hampshire and eastern Massachusetts. The
eldest of four children, he grew up in a working-class environment, which has
played a major role in his writing.
Mr. Banks (who was the first in his family to go to college) attended Colgate
University for less than a semester, and later graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before he could support himself as
a writer, he tried his hand at plumbing and as a shoe salesman and window
trimmer. He taught at a number of colleges and universities,
including Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence, University of New Hampshire, New
England College, New York University, and Princeton University.
A prolific writer of fiction, his titles include Searching for Survivors,
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