The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories

A finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Story Prize, the first ever collection of “dazzlingly told” (The New York Times) literary short stories from Don DeLillo, the National Book Award-winning author of Underworld and Falling Man.

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 through postmodern fiction about identity, urban isolation, alienation, cultural decay, and more. These nine stories describe an extraordinary journey of one great writer whose prescience about world events, ear for American language, and dark humor changed the literary landscape.