London: Titan Books, 2025
359 pages
9781835415382
Few novels have had such a year as Angel Down. Published in July 2025, it quickly found its way onto the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year, and this spring it won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a prize the jury described as going to a “stylistic tour-de-force”. At Donostia Book Club we wanted to find out for ourselves what all the fuss is about, so Daniel Kraus’s World War I novel is our reading for the meeting on November, 9th.
We are in France in the autumn of 1918, during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, only weeks before the Armistice. Private First Class Cyril Bagger, a former draft dodger, is sent to find the source of an unearthly shrieking that is driving the troops mad. He goes with four other misfits: the young and innocent Arno, the brutish Popkin, the nervous Goodspeed and Veck, who is suffering from severe shell shock. What the five find tangled in the barbed wire is not an enemy but an angel, and each of them sees in her a woman he knows. Convinced that their ambitious commander, Major General Reis, will exploit her for his own advancement, the men desert their post and carry her through the artillery fire, arguing among themselves and each hoping that she will grant his wish.
The novel is written as one single unbroken sentence, divided only by paragraphs that mostly begin with “and”. It begins in the middle of a sentence and in the middle of a battle, and it ends on a comma, as if the war, and the story, simply went on. The form gives the book a relentless rhythm that the critics have praised from the start: Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, said that Kraus “breathes new life into the war novel”. Beneath the horror and the lyrical flights, reviewers have also noted a sharp look at how religion and patriotism push men into the meat grinder of war, while Kraus himself has spoken of the absurd futility of millions of men dying over a few feet of ruined land. Imagine Entertainment, the company behind the film of his earlier novel Whalefall, announced in January this year that it is developing an adaptation.
We hope you’ll join us at our meeting, where we will definitely talk about some of these questions:
• How did you experience the single-sentence structure? Did it pull you in, wear you out, or both? Was there a moment when you stopped noticing it?
• Almost every paragraph begins with “and”. What does that repetition do to the pace of the story and to the feeling of reading it? Did it remind you of a chant, a prayer, or something else?
• The story is told entirely through Bagger’s point of view. What did you think of him as our guide: a draft dodger turned soldier, reluctant and out of place?
• Each of the five men sees a different face in the angel. What does that say about them, and about what each one wants from her?
• Arno, Popkin, Goodspeed and Veck: did you read them as individuals, or as types of men that war produces? Which one stayed with you the most?
• How does the novel portray the machinery of war and the ambitions of those who command it, such as Major General Reis?
• Kraus blends war fiction, horror and magical realism. Where would you place the book, and did the supernatural element feel like it belonged to the story?
• What do you think the novel says about the relationship between religion, patriotism and violence? Did the angel change your view of either?
• The book ends on a comma rather than a full stop. How did you feel about that ending, and what do you think the author wanted us to take from it?
• How does Angel Down compare with other war novels you have read? What does it do that they don’t?
• The novel won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and a film adaptation is in development. Is the prize deserved in your opinion, and how could a book told in one sentence work on screen?