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2009 BOOK AWARDS www.indieexcellence.com

Multicultural Fiction Finalist

http://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.aspx?bookid=35826

Shalom Tower Syndrome was also a Finalist in the "Fiction & Literature" category at

The National Best Books 2007 Awards. It was also released in 2008 in Italian by Edizioni Fabio Croce

The novel is set in Israel. Alexis, who grew up in Rwanda-Burundi, is the son of an Italian Jew and a beautiful mulatto woman. As a young adult, he now queries the complexity of his roots: African-European and Judeo-Christian (his mother was raised a Catholic). The author guides the reader through a progression of exciting and complicated episodes involving Alexis. With his American wife he will vacation in Israel, and that stay will be a turning point in his life. The past catches up with him, exploding with the images of one man's life kaleidoscope: the memories of his African years, colliding with the more recent images of Milan, the smells, the colors and the primeval beauty of the black continent, mingling with those of Italy, as well as with the violent feelings Israel stirs in him. In that dense and haunting atmosphere he will meet young Israelis, a Palestinian and a German professor, the nephew of a Nazi soldier who died during WWII. Will Alexis finally reconcile himself with the conflicting parts of his identity? Will he feel more African or more European; more Catholic or more Jewish; or will his new environment help him find peace within himself, in spite of the country’s current dangers? The ‘mystery’ will unravel in the last chapter of this largely autobiographical novel. ‘There is a type of novel whose aim, as Jonathan Swift wrote of his intention behind Gulliver's Travels, is to “vex the world rather than divert it.” If it's a good and true novel then it will inevitably also serve both as a vexatious testament and a diverting read. Such is Albert Russo's Shalom Tower Syndrome.

Shalom Tower Syndrome is very much a biography of the soul, and as much as that of any latter-day Harry Haller, and Russo seems to have dredged in its pages the depths of his own being in order to have written it.’

David Alexander

Excerpt from James Baldwin's letter to the author, penned the year of his death: “I like your work very much indeed. It has a very gentle surface and a savage under-tow. You're a dangerous man.”

See the author's own French version entitled LA TOUR SHALOM, published by Editions Hors Commerce in 2005 . SHALOM TOWER SYNDROME was also published in Italian in 2008 by Libreria Edizioni Croce

Albert RUSSO

Sang mêlé

Le grand roman

d'Albert Russo

Ginkgo Editeur

Diffusion/distribution CDE/Sodis

http://recherche.fnac.com/ia119638/Albert-Russo

Editions France Loisirs

Coniglio Editore - Italiano

http://www.coniglioeditore.it/jom/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=160&category_id=25&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=65

Quelques unes de mes photos exposées au

Musée de l'Elysée à Lausanne /

Some of my photos exhibited at the

Museum of Photography in Lausanne, Switzerland

The Benevolent American in the Heart of Darkness:

A trilogy of Albert Russo’s

award-winning

African novels set in

the former Belgian Congo

and Rwanda-Urundi

http://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.aspx?bookid=26766

XLibris - English

- Lettre de James Balwin à Albert Russo à propos de 'Sang Mêlé ':

“... J’aime votre écriture, car dans un style policé vous exprimez des sentiments violents, faisant éclater des vérités terrifiantes.”

- Voici ce que le grand écrivain contemporain, Edmund White, l'auteur de la magistrale biographie de Jean Genet et de romans à succès, dit de SANG MELE :

"Albert Russo a su recréer, à travers les joies et les angoisses d'un jeune métis congolais, les tensions de la vie moderne, qu'il s'agisse des relations entre noirs et blancs, entre le Tiers monde et nos sociétés technologiquement avancées, ou de la question toujours épineuse de l'homosexualité ... SANG MELE est un roman que l'on ne lache pas, tel quel, il est envoûtant."

The Norwegian Public Schools have chosen Albert Russo's poem LOST IDENTITY for their students' (close to 2,000) final English examinations, before they can enter university.

LOST IDENTITY

tell me what to do

tell me where to go

am I losing my bearings?

why are you still

by my side?

I don’t recognize you anymore

I can’t remember

the good times

they seem to have dissolved

into a slipstream

give me your hand