The Angel's Promise

Novel

with Violette Cabesos

2004 Press House Prize
Translated into 13 languages

Presentation

Beneath the crypt of Mont Saint Michel, a thousand-year-old secret...
A storm-battered rock, a place of primitive worship sanctified by the first Christians, Mont Saint Michel is far from having revealed all its secrets. At the beginning of the 11th century, cathedral builders erected a large Romanesque abbey there in honor of the Archangel, prince of the heavenly armies and guide of souls into the afterlife.
A thousand years later, a young archaeologist fascinated by the Middle Ages finds herself trapped in an enigma where the past and the present strangely converge.

Translations

German : PIPER R. GMBH & CO. KG
US English : PEGASUS BOOKS (“The Angel's Promise”)
Chinese : SHANGAI 99 READERS' CULTURAL CO LTD.
Korean : YEDAM
Spanish (Castilian): EDICIONES GRIJALBO
Modern Greek (after 1453): ELECTRA EDITIONS
Lithuanian : TYTO ALBA
Polish : ALBATROS EDITURA
Portuguese : CIRCULO DE LEITORES (Club Edition only)
Portuguese : DIFEL EDITORA
Romanian : RAO INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING GROUP
Russian : EKSMO
Serbian EDITIONS : LAGUNA

What the press says about it

“A novel of cathedral proportions whose architecture and subtlety are revealed as one progresses, as one’s gaze becomes accustomed to the medieval darkness… There is an abundance of meaning and several levels of reading in this historical and detective story, metaphysical and initiatory. It is in the vein of Ken Follet’s bestseller, The Pillars of the Earth. We are spellbound.” Le Figaro

“A novel whose plot unfolds over several centuries, and whose suspense defies the imagination without ever ceasing to be plausible… a true archaeological thriller, an enigma that brings to mind the curse of Tutankhamun and Agatha Christie’s “Ten Little Niggers.” And all this phantasmagoria is built around a dream, like a pyramid standing on its tip… You have to dig into the Earth to find the sky.” Le Nouvel Observateur

“A less tortuous, more fluid historical thriller than those of Umberto Eco. These two parallel stories are well-crafted, with the fascinating construction of Mont Saint Michel as a backdrop…” Le Parisien

“A book that mixes history, mystery, and archaeology. A whole procession of mysterious crimes and unspeakable secrets that draw us deep into the bowels of the sacred mountain, making this book a historical thriller of the finest vintage.” Ouest France

“Past, present, great history and individual destinies, spirituality and obscurantism, corpses and treasure hunts… If The Angel’s Promise is reminiscent of The Name of the Rose , the beautiful metaphysical thriller by Frédéric Lenoir and Violette Cabesos has the merit of dusting off the touristy and tiresome image of Mont Saint Michel to restore it to all its historical and religious complexity. Not without playing the romantic and sentimental card to the full, which brings out some particularly erudite passages particularly well… Devilishly captivating.” France Soir

“A scholarly thriller conceived as an archaeological treasure hunt… skillfully juggling past and present, the authors lift the veil on the techniques of cathedral builders, the origin of Celtic beliefs, monastic life in the Middle Ages, ecclesiastical deceit and the daily constraints of contemporary archaeologists… and the struggle of a monk against his guilty inclination for a beautiful healer. Nothing like a bouquet of impious feelings to exhale all the scents of a sacred place. And to restore to a tourist temple, besieged by stalls and refreshment stands, a little of its divine mystery.” L'Express

“A breathtaking theological thriller, wildly romantic.” She