The Angel Maker

Author: Stefan Brijs

In a small village at the point where the Dutch, Belgian and German borders meet, a strange doctor arrives with three even stranger children. Slowly, as we come to understand what is going on, we realise that the beautifully clear and simple prose is actually telling a very complex story. A story about cloning and the ethics of experimenting on humans; a story in which God is evil and Jesus is good; a story in which the ability to do good depends on what we perceive good to be. The result is a searing examination of the conflict between science and religion, in which the more one tries to do good the greater the horror.Why it's on the listThe novel won numerous awards in Europe, and the translation is about as good as you could get, and yet the novel barely registered in the English-speaking world. This is a prime and sad example of the resistance of English readers to read work in translation.