Angel Down (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
A Novel
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4.2 • 62 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2025 • INDIE BESTSELLER • USA TODAY BESTSELLER
The critically acclaimed author of the “crazily enjoyable” (The New York Times) Whalefall returns with an immersive, cinematic novel about five World War I soldiers who stumble upon a fallen angel that could hold the key to ending the war.
Private Cyril Bagger has managed to survive the unspeakable horrors of the Great War through his wits and deception. But his survival instincts are put to the ultimate test when he and four other grunts are given a deadly mission: venture into the perilous No Man’s Land to euthanize a wounded comrade.
What they find amid the ruined battlefield, however, is not a man in need of mercy but a fallen angel, seemingly struck down by artillery fire. This celestial being may hold the key to ending the brutal conflict, but only if the soldiers can suppress their individual desires and work together. As jealousy, greed, and paranoia take hold, the group is torn apart by their inner demons, threatening to turn their angelic encounter into a descent into hell.
Angel Down plunges you into the heart of World War I and weaves a polyphonic tale of survival, supernatural wonder, and moral conflict.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kraus (Whale Fall) delivers a vivid tale, composed of a single sentence, about an angel's appearance on a French battlefield near the end of WWI. American infantryman and card sharp Cyril Bagger is ordered by ambitious Major General Reis to investigate the source of an unearthly shrieking that's driving members of their company insane. Dispatched with Cyril are four other misfits—innocent, underage Arno; brutish Popkin; "squirmy, squirrelish" Goodspeed; and seriously shell-shocked Veck. The quintet finds an angel in the form of a Madonna figure, wrapped in barbed wire and emitting a "breathtaking" beacon of light. Determined not to turn the angel over to Reis, whom they assume will use her to advance his career, they desert, ducking artillery fire and bickering as they vie for the angel's attention, believing she's capable of granting their wishes. Kraus ramps up the tension with the relentless cadence of his prose, offering no breaks from the action but finding room for glorious lyrical flights ("and so Bagger sits up with vision aswirl and shoos away the filthy pelt of air, the pigeon-gray smoke and eyeball-white fog"). With this vigorous narrative, Kraus breathes new life into the war novel.
Customer Reviews
Weird, almost psychedelic at times.
At the end of the day, while a creative plot and vivid descriptions of WWI trench warfare, I didn’t care for it.