PARIS, April 26, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- Award-winning, published bilingual author Albert Russo announces the release of his new literary opus, The Benevolent American in the Heart of Darkness, which showcases not one but three of his brilliant stories about the Africa he knows. The much-acclaimed literary works of Russo are testimony to his uncanny bilingualism and powerful interpretative skill as he beautifully depicts the colorful souls found in the African brush.
The Benevolent American in the Heart of Darkness is a trilogy of Albert Russo's award-winning African novels set in the former Belgian Congo and Rwanda-Urundi. The first story, "The Black Ancestor", follows the quest of a white girl in the Belgian Congo who seeks the answer to her fate when she learns she has a black ancestor. "Eclipse Over Lake Tanganyika", the second story, is the sentimental journey of a young man lost in the lush foliage of the Bujumbura valley after his dreams shattered. And the third story, "Mixed Blood or Your Son Leopold", is Russo's excellent rendition of mid-twentieth-century central Africa.
About the Author
A bilingual author, Albert Russo writes in both English and French, his two 'mother tongues'. He also speaks five languages fluently and has lived in Africa, the United States, and Europe. He is the recipient of many awards, such as The American Society of Writers Fiction Award, The British Diversity Short Story Award, several New York Poetry Forum Awards, Amelia Prose and Poetry awards and the Prix Colette. He has also been nominated for the W.B. Yeats and Robert Penn Warren poetry awards. His fiction, which has been praised by James Baldwin, Pierre Emmanuel, Paul Willems, Gilles Perrault, and Edmund White, has appeared worldwide in a dozen languages.
Albert Russo's African novels have been favorably compared to V.S. Naipaul's work, which was honored with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. Russo is a member of the jury for the Prix Europeen (with Ionesco, until his death) and sat in 1996 on the panel of the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature, which often leads to the Nobel Prize. His literary website: www.albertrusso.com "Albert Russo has recreated through a young African boy's joys and struggles, many of the tensions of modern life, straight and gay, black and white, third-world and first... all of these tensions underlie this story of a biracial child adopted by a benevolent American. Mixed Blood or Your Son Leopold is a non-stop, gripping read!" Edmund White.
The Benevolent American in the Heart of Darkness
By Albert Russo
Trade Paperback; $26.99; 547 pages; 1-4134-7012-2
Cloth Hardback; $36.99; 547 pages; 1-4134-7013-0
To request a complimentary paperback review copy, contact the publisher at (888) 795-4274 x. 486. Tearsheets may be sent by regular or electronic mail to Carmi Domingo. To purchase copies of the book for resale, please fax Xlibris at (610) 915-0293 or call (888) 795-4274 x.876.
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