The Angel Esmeralda - by Don Delillo (Paperback)

About the Book

Collects nine stories written between 1979 and 2011 that chronicle three decades of American life from the perspective of a range of characters, including a pair of nuns in the South Bronx and two astronauts orbiting the Earth.

Book Synopsis

A finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Story Prize, the first ever collection of "dazzlingly told" (The New York Times) short stories--now available as a trade paperback.

Set in Greece, the Caribbean, Manhattan, a white-collar prison and outer space, this "small masterpiece of short fiction" (USA Today) is a mesmerizing introduction to Don DeLillo's iconic voice. In "Creation," a couple at the end of a cruise somewhere in the West Indies can't get off the island--flights canceled, unconfirmed reservations, a dysfunctional economy. In "Human Moments in World War III," two men orbiting the earth, charged with gathering intelligence and reporting to Colorado Command, hear the voices of American radio, from a half century earlier. In the title story, Sisters Edgar and Grace, nuns working the violent streets of the South Bronx, confirm the neighborhood's miracle, the apparition of a dead child, Esmeralda.

Nuns, astronauts, athletes, terrorists and travelers, the characters in The Angel Esmeralda propel themselves into the world and define it. These nine stories describe an extraordinary journey of one great writer whose prescience about world events and ear for American language changed the literary landscape.

Review Quotes

"[DeLillo's] prose is masterly and austere...Even the most fragmentary of [the stories] provides the pleasure of reading the inimitably elegant sentences that DeLillo has been fashioning for four decades."--Troy Jollimore, The Washington Post

"A beautiful book for all time"--San Francisco Chronicle

"A terrific overview of [DeLillo's] many strengths, from pitch-perfect character descriptions to surprising humor to soaring lyricism...The literary fireworks of the title piece alone are a stunning example of how the ordinary can become extraordinary in a gifted artist's hands...Behold and be dazzled."--Josh Emmons, People

"A vital addition to DeLillo's corpus...expertly realized...The gods have equipped DeLillo with the antennae of a visionary. There is right field, and there is left field. He comes from third field--aslant, athwart. And I love The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories."--Martin Amis, The New Yorker

"I was dazzled...Reading this collection confirms DeLillo as one of our very best short story writers...The richness of his work, the pleasures on offer--intellectual, visceral, poetic, comic--are unrivalled."--Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask

"Magnificent."--Richard Eder, The Boston Globe

"Many of [DeLillo's] deceptively simple sentences will leave you awestruck...This slim volume is a marvel--a masterpiece of short fiction."--Carmela Ciuraru, USA Today

"The typical DeLillo tale reads like a diagnosis of a zeitgeist malady we never knew we had, and in these stories the malady is one of spellbound fixation. DeLillo has achieved a very particular kind of greatness...and his gifts...are, for a contemporary American writer, unsurpassed."--Charles Baxter, The New York Review of Books

About the Author

Don DeLillo is the author of fifteen novels and winner of the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize for his complete body of work, and the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2010, he was awarded the PEN/Saul Bellow Prize. In October 2012, DeLillo receives the Carl Sandburg Literary Award for his body of work.