Minor Angels
Antoine Volodine (Author), Jordan Stump (Translated by), Jordan Stump (Preface by)
9780803220898
Paperback / softback, published 1 December 2008
166 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.1 cm, 0.283 kg
"Minor Angels has all the markings of a masterpiece: compression, resonance, and vision."—Terese Svoboda, The Literary Review
"His talent surfaces time and again in luxurious, hypnotic ways."—Publishers Weekly
"Clever and incisive."—New York Times Book Review
"Alive with color and detail."—Kirkus Reviews
"His quirky and eccentric narrative achieves quite staggering and electric effects. . . . Dazzling in its epic proportions and imaginative scope."—The Nation
"Rilke was right: Every angel /is/ terrible. But the language here is intoxicating, and the buzz you get makes even the ugliest stories appear beautiful."—New York Journal News
"Volodine isn't afraid to tangle animate and inanimate spirits, or thwart expectations. He delights in breaking down our wellhoned meters of what's supposed to happen. It is out of the shambles of these once-easy relationships that Minor Angels really soars."—Margaret Wappler, The Believer Magazine
"Volodine's characters struggle against humankind's demise, managing to cling to their full names and little else, and in the process they reveal their compelling histories and strange presents, all of them concerned that their stories be told.'"—Tim Feeney, Review of Contemporary Fiction
From Antoine Volodine comes a deeply disturbing and darkly hilarious novel whose full meaning, its author asserts, will be found not in the book's pages but in the dreams people will have after reading it. In Minor Angels Volodine depicts a postcataclysmic world in which the forces of capitalism have begun to reestablish themselves. Sharply opposed to such a trend, a group of crones confined to a nursing home—all of them apparently immortal—resolves to create an avenging grandson fashioned of lint and rags. Though conjured to crush the rebirth of capitalism, the grandson is instead seduced by its charms—only to fall back into the hands of his creators, where he manages to forestall his punishment by reciting one "narract" a day. It is these narracts, or prose poems, that compose the text of Minor Angels.
