The Magic Kingdom

A dazzling tapestry of love and faith, memory and imagination, The Magic Kingdom questions what it means to look back and accept one's place in history. With an expert eye and stunning vision, Russell Banks delivers a wholly captivating portrait of a man navigating Americana and the passage of time.

In 1971, a property speculator named Harley Mann begins recording his life story onto a reel-to-reel machine. Reflecting on his childhood in the early twentieth century, Harley recounts that after his father's sudden death, his family migrated down to Florida's swamplands - mere miles away from what would become Disney World - to join a community of Shakers. Led by Elder John, a generous man with a mysterious past, the colony devoted itself to labor, faith, and charity, rejecting all temptations that lay beyond the property. Though this way of life initially saved Harley and his family from complete ruin, when Harley began falling in love with Sadie Pratt, a consumptive patient living on the grounds, his loyalty to the Shakers and their conservative worldview grew strained and, ultimately, broke. As Harley dictates his story across more than half a century - meditating on youth, Florida's everchanging landscape, and the search for an American utopia - the truth about Sadie, Elder John, and the Shakers comes to light, clarifying the past and present alike.

'Russell Banks's new novel is eerily timely. Can what's gone wrong in the past offer keys to the future? The Magic Kingdom confronts our longings for Paradise; also the inner serpents that are to be found in all such enchanted gardens' - Margaret Atwood

'As always happens when I read Russell Banks' work, I couldn't put it down. That is the Banks magic - the propulsive force of the narrative, even as his stories twist and turn through various diversions, asides, and introspections - for the narrative voice is always constant, and that constancy never fails to hold the reader in its grip' - Paul Auster

'Heartbreaking...Banks' penetrating dissection of the American dream and its frequently unfulfilled promises is consistently profound. This is his best work in some time' - Publishers Weekly, starred review

'[The Magic Kingdom's] core is the emotional mirror of memory... A multilayered tale of innocence and guilt from a gifted storyteller' - Kirkus, starred review

America has always been aspirational-the search for 'a more perfect union,' as outlined in the preamble to the Constitution, ongoing. But in The Magic Kingdom, Russell Banks's beautifully crafted story of love and betrayal in an early-20th-century religious community, those ideals undermine one man's chance for happiness, revealing the flaws in our American dream along the way Boston Globe
Russell Banks's new novel is eerily timely. Can what's gone wrong in the past offer keys to the future? The Magic Kingdom confronts our longings for Paradise; also the inner serpents that are to be found in all such enchanted gardens -- Margaret Atwood
A fascinating tale narrated over half a century -- 28 Books You'll Want to Read This Fall New York Post
Banks dazzles in this story of a Floridian Shaker community torn apart from within and without . . . The author uses himself as a narrator, a metafictional device that throws the fictional past into stark relief -- 30 Books We Can't Wait For This Fall Los Angeles Times
Engrossing . . . As ever, Banks writes gorgeously about [Florida's] natural wonders, pointing out the strange magnetism a place needs to have to attract the world's detritus . . . Banks is writing with an eye to the present Los Angeles Times

Russell Banks has published eleven novels, six short story collections, and four poetry collections. His novels Cloudsplitter and Continental Drift were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Two of Banks' novels have been adapted for feature-length films, The Sweet Hereafter (winner of the Grand Prix and International Critics Prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival) and Affliction (which earned a 'Best Supporting Actor' Oscar for James Coburn). Banks has won numerous awards for his work, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, O. Henry and Best American Short Story Award, and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. One of America's most prestigious fiction writers, Russell Banks was president of the International Parliament of Writers and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

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