The ninth nov­el in inter­na­tion­al­ly acclaimed author Marie-Claire Blais’s extra­or­di­nary Soifs cycle, Songs for Angel is an impas­sioned inter­ro­ga­tion of vio­lence and hate that takes us into the soul of a white suprema­cist on the verge of a racist attack. In the penul­ti­mate install­ment of the mag­nif­i­cent and ambi­tious Soifs cycle, wide­ly regard­ed as one of the most orig­i­nal and ambi­tious endeav­ors ever to be under­tak­en in con­tem­po­rary lit­er­a­ture, renowned nov­el­ist Marie-Claire Blais once again mar­ries the high­est artis­tic stan­dards with the most press­ing human and polit­i­cal con­cerns. Revis­it­ing fig­ures from the pre­vi­ous nov­els in a swirling fres­co of more than a hun­dred char­ac­ters, Blais also takes us into the soul of ​“the Young Man,” a white suprema­cist prepar­ing to attack a Black church and mur­der its entire con­gre­ga­tion. This is an extra­or­di­nary por­trait of the times that jos­tles and dis­com­bolu­ates the read­er while invit­ing us to see the world in all its injus­tice and dis­tress, but also its promise and beau­ty. Songs for Angel reminds us that Blais is a writer who nev­er ceas­es to sit­u­ate us in the world and the roles we play in it, and that read­ing her is always an unfor­get­table human experience.