The Silent Angel

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