The Angel of History

Translated by Minna Proctor

An award-winning reimagining of Walter Benjamin's final days during World War II

For a brief moment in 1940 the lives of a young Spanish militant and a reclusive academic of German and Jewish heritage are thrown together.

Along with thousands of others across Europe both men have fled their homeland in the face of fascist persecution, yet until the day their paths converge on a remote mountain pass between France and Spain, their experience of war has been vastly different.

Based on true events of Benjamin's life, and ranging from the Left Bank in Paris to the prison camps of southern France, The Angel of History explores how the history we think we know is not a series of events but rather a constellation of countless individual lives. And although every story is unique, each is founded on the same human desire—to be remembered.

Praise for The Angel of History:

'The success of Arpaia's novel lies in his delicate evocations of everyday life for Benjamin during the Paris years, with the Nazi armies marching in the invisible distance. One can almost hear the boots on the pavement, the tanks lumbering towards the French border, as Benjamin idles in smoky cafés over a volume of poetry. He often meets with friends at the Deux Magots to play chess and talk about books: Arpaia has thoroughly absorbed the scene, the friends, the hot topics of discussion. The intellectual currents of the time wash through his prose, which in intriguing ways emulates the style of Benjamin himself, with its attention to detail, its fits and starts, its sentences that curl and buckle. At times the writing shimmers on the page with memorable images...Benjamin really was someone, and The Angel of History amplifies the ever-enlarging legend of a man whose literary and philosophical essays continue to inspire readers.'

Guardian