The acclaimed author ofThe Sweet HereafterandRule of the Bonereturns with a provocative new novel,Lost Memory Of Skin,that unfolds in language both powerful and beautifully lyrical, show-casingBanks Russellat his most compelling, his reckless sense of humour and intense empathy at full bore"Like our living literary giants Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon, Russell Banks is a great writer wrestling with the hidden secrets and explosive realities of this country."  -Cornel WestThe young man at the centre of Russell Banks's uncompromising and morally complex new novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known in his new identity only as the Kid, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to go near where children might gather. He takes up residence under a South Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders.Enter the Professor, a university sociologist of enormous size and intellect who finds in the Kid the perfect subject for his research. But when the Professor's past resurfaces and threatens to destroy his carefully constructed world, the Kid must reconsider everything he has come to believe, and choose what course of action to take when faced with an unexpectedly hard decision."Russell Banks's work presents without falsehood and with tough affection the uncompromising moral voice of our time... I trust his portraits of America more than any other - the burden of it, the need for it, the hell of it."-Michael OndaatjeThe perfect convergence of writer and subject,Lost Memory Of Skinprobes the zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero tolerance has erased any hope of subtlety and compassion - a society where isolating the offender has perhaps created a new kind of victim.