Acclaimed author Russell Banks will be talking about his first new novel in a decade – Foregone – which is one of his most ambitious works to date. Writers including Marilynne Robinson, Roddy Doyle, Joseph O'Connor, Ann Beattie and Colum McCann have all praised Foregone. Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Franzen are also fans of his work.

Banks has been writing acclaimed novels for almost half a century and is renowned for his poignant depictions of moral turmoil. His latest novel is no exception.

📷Foregone is the story of  Leonard Fife – a celebrated filmmaker who is looking back on his life and plans to make a recorded deathbed confession, which overturns the narrative of his life in shocking ways. The novel is a searing meditation on ageing, memory and reputation.

‘A subtle meditation on a life composed of half-forgotten impulses and their endless consequences, misapprehensions of others that are accepted and exploited almost passively, a minor heroism that is only enhanced by demurral. In the rages of a sick old man profound questions arise – what is a life? A self? And what is lost when truth destroys the fabrications that sustain other lives?’ – MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Banks will be interviewed by Roland Gulliver - the Director of the Toronto International Festival of Authors.

Buy an exclusive signed bookplate edition of FOREGONE for just £10

📷RUSSELL BANKS has published ten novels, six short story collections, and four poetry collections. His novels Cloudsplitter and Continental Drift were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Two of Banks’s 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 is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

📷ROLAND GULLIVER is the Director of the Toronto International Festival of Authors, taking up the position in February 2020 and presenting TIFA’s 41st edition in October 2020, it first digital festival with over 200 events and activities. One of the biggest digital book festivals in the world, it presented conversations, performances, masterclasses, multilingual events, podcasts, animations and more.

Gulliver is on the Board of Directors for the Toronto Arts Council and Chair of the TAC’s Literary Advisory Committee. He is a Member of the Academy for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and was a judge for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses. Recently he was a judge for the fiction category of the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.

Book launch of FOREGONE by Russell Banks