And the donkey saw the angel

A debut novel full of darkness, humour and biblical imagery

A lot of musicians talk in interviews about wanting to write a novel one day, that it's something they're very tempted to do - but in the end they never get around to it. Or maybe they really find the time and put all their diligence and patience into writing, but then it turns out that they overestimated themselves a bit and that maybe they should have stayed with the songs...
That's not the case with Nick Cave. In her 1989 debut novel, A Donkey Saw an Angel, she brilliantly blends her own distinctive poetics, full of romantic images, of biblical allusions, of morbid fantasies and black humour, with a great reading comprehension (he was mainly inspired by American Southern literature, William Faulkner or Flannery O'Connor, starting with Cormac McCarthy). Its baroque and flamboyant, to a grotesque story, set in the American South of the 1940s and 1950s, dominated by violence, alcohol, perversion and animal instincts; God's punishment and the devil's laughter.
In the novel A Donkey Saw an Angel, brilliantly translated by Tomáš Hrách, nothing is forgiven and everything is paid for.
The novel has received enthusiastic critical acclaim worldwide for its language full of biblical metaphors and its gripping story told on the borderline between dream and madness.