The Silent Angel
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Orion Publishing Co
Publishing:5th Nov '26
£12.99
This title is due to be published on 5th November, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Set in Cologne in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, The Silent Angel is one of the most important works of so-called Trümmerliteratur (the literature of the ruins).
On May 8, 1945, German soldier and deserter Hans Schnitzler returns to a city reduced to rubble, without papers and haunted by survival. Carrying the coat of a fallen comrade - who died in his place -Hans seeks out the dead man's widow, unaware that the coat conceals a will that will soon draw him into a dangerous intrigue. As he wanders through the bombed streets, Hans meets a woman living alone in a near-ruined apartment. She has lost her baby in an air raid; Hans has lost his wife.
Bound by grief and dislocation, the two strangers find refuge together like castaways amid the wreckage. At first they envy the dead and struggle to imagine a future, but slowly, against the backdrop of moral uncertainty and physical devastation, they begin to rediscover love, hope, and the possibility of a life worth living in a shattered world.
A W&N Essential
A work of art . . . In it the major themes of Böll's career - marriage, religion and abuses of power that undermine both - are handled with a poetic authority rare to first-time novelists * New York Times *
This excellent novel is a story of love among the ruins * Sunday Times *
A beautiful, urgent novel . . . as perfect as anything Boll ever wrote -- Alberto Manguel * The Washington Post Book World *
His first and possibly his finest novel * Herald *
So begins what was Nobel-winner Boll's first novel, a touching love story and trenchant study of moral decay . . . lyrical, spare and somanbulisitic * Publishers Weekly *
Amazing and most eloquent . . . this gripping novella reads like a sketch for a masterpiece * Mail on Sunday *
Boll creates a brittle, intense love between two people who are bewildered that they still are capable of love -- Ursula Hegi * LA Times *
We are in the hands of a master craftsman * Sunday Tribune *
ISBN: 9781474624961
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 41g
192 pages