THOMAS E. KENNEDY In the Company of Angels

'As elegant as it is beautiful, as important as it is profound" JUNOT DÍAZ

THOMAS E. KENNEDY

In the Company of Angels

BLOOMSBURY

How much of a survivor, in fact, survives? How much must remain of a survivor for him also to be called a man?

Bernardo Greene is attempting to rebuild his life. Imprisoned and tortured by Pinochet's regime for introducing his students to political poetry, he has arrived in Copenhagen at the age of forty-nine, to begin, to begin again.

Michela Ibsen also seeks a new beginning. She has survived an abusive marriage and the death of a child, but does not know whether this makes her strong, or even whole. Her latest boyfriend is young, vain and dangerously possessive.

Michela's eyes meet Bernardo's over a cup of coffee in a café by the lake. During a long Scandinavian summer of endless days and pin- point nights, these two lost souls begin to heal, to forgive and to trust themselves to love.

A novel about passion in the wake of loss, pain in the wake of truth, and salvation in the wake of despair, In the Company of Angels is the mesmeric and quietly devastating masterpiece from internationally celebrated author Thomas E. Kennedy.

THOMAS E. KENNEDY was born in New York. He has lived in Copenhagen for over two decades, and has worked, among other things, as a translator for Copenhagen's Rehabilitation Centre for Torture Victims. He has written over twenty books including novels, short stories, and essays. He has won numerous awards, including the Eric Hoffer Award for In the Company of Angels, the Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry Prize for short stories, and the National Magazine Award. He teaches creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and is the father of two grown children who live in Denmark.

In the Company of Angels is one of four novels comprising the Copenhagen Quartet.

Cover design: David Mann

Cover photograph: Corbis

"The combination of subtle, beautiful prose and searingly painful realities make In the Company of Angels a story that lingers in the intellect as pervasively as in the heart. An astonishing, wise novel of our times'

LIZ JENSEN, author of The Rapture

'Powerful and of the moment... Kennedy writes clean, evocative prose... He is a writer to be reckoned with'

WASHINGTON Post

"Thomas E. Kennedy writes with utter fluency, care, passion and intelligence. There is a lightness of touch and intimacy as if the alphabets are precious stones in a jeweller's deft hands. He is a master storyteller... An outstanding and important novel'

SUDEEP SEN, author of Postmarked India

Thomas Kennedy tackles the darkest of subjects, but with searing precision and grace, and with such feeling for ordinary humanity, that this book is full of light'

RENE STEINKE, author of Holy Skirts

'Tragic, wise, comic, profound .... An epic of the human heart struggling for meaning and redemption'

LITERARY REVIEW

[A] wide-ranging and assured novel'

NEW YORKER

'A wonderful novel, epic and subtle'

WESLEY STACE, author of Misfortune

www.bloomsbury.com

ISBN 978-1-4088-0291-5

9 781408 802915

FSC

Mixed Sources

BLOOMSBURY