Shooting Angels - Hardcover

Hope, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1848873387 ISBN 13: 9781848873384

Publisher: Atlantic Books, 2011

Synopsis

"There is everything you don't know," said Joe Angel, with a vulpine grin, as his limousine pulled away leaving Charlie Croker in a cloud of dust by the side of the road. Somehow the most famous businessman in the country had found Charlie in the backwater where he had been hiding all these years and arrived unannounced to give him an envelope of money and a simple message: come back to the Capital to learn what really happened to Constanza—the woman he loved—on that terrible night decades before. At first, Charlie is furious that Joe would just reappear with such an outrageous demand. He soon realizes a fire has been relit; one he thought had been extinguished by long years in the wilderness. But by the time Charlie returns to the city to meet Joe, the tycoon is dead. And so begins Charlie Croker's epic journey into his own past. It is an odyssey which seems, at times, to lead straight to the broken heart of the country itself. After a lifetime spent trying to forget, Charlie realizes that there can, finally, be a reckoning with those he has loved, those he has betrayed, and the guilt that has been suffocating him.

About this title

About the Author:

Christopher Hope is the author of nine novels and one collection of short stories, including Kruger's Alp, which won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction, Serenity House, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and My Mother's Lovers. He is also a poet and playwright, and author of the celebrated memoir White Boy Running.

From Booklist:

“We rioted regularly, demonstrated dutifully, and got nowhere. But we did enjoy it.” With wry wit, Hope exposes the political maneuvering during apartheid and after its end in his native South Africa, and he tells it through the first-person narrative of Charlie Crocker, who follows his country’s changes as each revolutionary cabal “promised to deliver universal equity, by force, if necessary; then . . . gave way either to stifling conformity or exultant sectarianism.” More than slick relativism, the personal story drives the gripping mystery. Charlie’s childhood friend and enemy, Joe, now a billionaire, suddenly arrives with a pack of money. Joe worships neither Calvinism nor Catholicism nor communism; his hero is another C—Al Capone. Then Joe is found dead. Is it murder or suicide? Why? And who killed beautiful Constanza, the love of Charlie’s life? The dark, provocative humor is sure to spark discussion about the struggle for freedom. --Hazel Rochman

About this edition

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1848873387
• ISBN 13: 9781848873384
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272