num_pages: 758
description: A triumph of the imagination and a masterpiece of modern storytelling, Cloudsplitter is narrated by the enigmatic Owen Brown, last surviving son of America's most famous and still controversial political terrorist and martyr, John Brown. Deeply researched, brilliantly plotted, and peopled with a cast of unforgettable characters both historical and wholly invented, Cloudsplitter is dazzling in its re-creation of the political and social landscape of our history during the years before the Civil War, when slavery was tearing the country apart. But within this broader scope, Russell Banks has given us a riveting, suspenseful, heartbreaking narrative filled with intimate scenes of domestic life, of violence and action in battle, of romance and familial life and death that make the reader feel in astonishing ways what it is like to be alive in that time.
language: English
title: Cloudsplitter
titlecomplete: Cloudsplitter
characters: John Brown, Owen Brown
genres: Civil War, Historical, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, American History, War, The United States Of America, Fiction
ratings_count: 4780
places: West Virginia, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, Kansas
awards: awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, awardedAt: 915177600000
name: PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Audie Award
category: Fiction, Abridged
publisher: Harper Perennial