The Mark of the Angel

Nov 25, 2025 11:49 AM

Author:Nancy Huston

The year is 1957 and the place is Paris, where the psychic wounds of World War II have barely begun to heal. Saffie, a young German woman, becomes maid, then wife, to Raphael, a privileged French musician who finds her remoteness provocative and irresistable. One day in the old Jewish quarter of the city, where she has taken Raphael's flute to be repaired, Saffie meets a Hungarian instrument maker - and all their lives are unexpectedly, dramatically altered.

Driven by passion but damaged in different ways by war, these two people find themselves crossing dangerous boundaries. Told against the rising tide of violence unleashed by the Algerian conflict, The Mark of the Angel builds to a shocking climax conveying the loss of innocence and the tragic irony of these lives twisted out of shape by the weight of history.

Reviews

A courageous self-assessment... interesting and pivotal... done with sincerity and intelligence

—— Times Literary Supplement

Peter Carey, Garcia Marquez, Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Andre Brink must be considered with that class of writer

—— The Guardian

One of South Africa's most eloquent literary voices

—— Libby Brooks , Guardian

One of South Africa's most distinguished writers and a key figure in the modernisation of the Afrikaans novel

—— Observer

The best novel is a book that, to my shame, I have only just read. Visiting Vienna earlier in the year, I realised how little I knew about the Austro-Hungarian empire. So I read Joseph Roth's 1932 book The Radetzky March (Penguin Classics) and, as soon as I finished reading it, I read it all over again.

—— Chris Patten , New Statesman

'Delights, amuses, moves and angers you with the lightest of touches. It is, as might be said of Cadence herself, a small masterpiece'

—— Simon Callow , Vogue

'Wonderful, funny, poignant and gutsy...you can feel the author's huge and hurt and loving heart beat on every page'

—— Anne Lamott , Mademoiselle

'An intensely enjoyable novel about friendship and prejudice: the dialogue is word perfect, the psycology laser fine, and there are some terrific jokes... but no synopsis can do justice to this glorious book'

—— David Profumo , Weekend Telegraph

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