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The Silent Angel

By (author) Heinrich BÃ¶ll

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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 TrÃ¼mmerliteratur (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