The Angel of History

Darkly funny - Library Journal

In this provocative portrait of a man in crisis, masterful storyteller Alameddine takes on some of the most wrenching conflicts of the day. - Booklist

Alameddine is excellent at weaving literary references into his storytelling … A feverish portrait of a mind in crisis. - Kirkus Reviews

Alameddine brilliantly captures [the protagonist] Jacob’s mind as it leaps between memory and the present. - Publisher’s Weekly

In the spirit of Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical masterpiece THE MASTER AND MARGARITA, Rabih Alameddine conjures an elegiac comedy with aplomb, his incantations rich with sincerity and irreverence … Alameddine is an entrancing storyteller, imbuing the quotidian with magnificence and undermining solemnity with sauciness … THE ANGEL OF HISTORY is outstanding, a novel that leaves a lasting mark. - Shelf Awareness

A cleverly constructed novel that questions what we remember and why we forget. - San Francisco Magazine

Here is a book, full of story, unrepentantly political at every level. At a time when many western writers seem to be in retreat from saying anything that could be construed as political, Alameddine says it all, shamelessly, gloriously and, realised like his Satan, in the most stylish of forms. - Aminatta Forna, The Guardian

Shades of THE MASTER AND MARGARITA haunt Rabih Alameddine’s sixth book … Yet, while echoes of Bulgakov’s masterpiece inform THE ANGEL OF HISTORY from first to last, Alameddine has created a scintillating, original work whose moral complexity and detail of observation are wholly contemporary and entirely his own. - John Burnside, Spectator