The classic novel of the London Blitz, DARKNESS FALLS FROM THE AIR captures the chaos, absurdity and ultimately the tragedy of life during the bombardment.
Featured on BACKLISTED podcast
Bill Sarratt is a civil servant working on the war effort. Thwarted at every turn by bureaucracy and the vested interests of big business, the seemingly unflappable Bill is also on the verge of losing his wife Marcia to a literary poseur named Stephen. As the bombs continue to fall, Bill must decide whether he his willing to compromise his principles and prevent his life from crumbling before his very eyes.
Featured on BACKLISTED podcast
Bill Sarratt is a civil servant working on the war effort. Thwarted at every turn by bureaucracy and the vested interests of big business, the seemingly unflappable Bill is also on the verge of losing his wife Marcia to a literary poseur named Stephen. As the bombs continue to fall, Bill must decide whether he his willing to compromise his principles and prevent his life from crumbling before his very eyes.
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Reviews
[An] inexplicably neglected author
One of the best writers, and certainly one of the best stylists, to come out of the war years
Balchin has been absurdly overlooked for too long
A superb storyteller
Probably no other novelist of Mr. Balchin's value is so eminently and enjoyably readable . . . [He] never lets the reader down
A brilliant novelist . . . A writer of real skill
A little masterpiece like Nigel Balchin's The Small Back Room speaks to our own time, but with so much literary experience behind it
Balchin has the rare magnetic power that draws the human eye from one sentence to the next
Balchin writes about timeless things, the places in the heart
Darkness Falls from the Air [has] the most perfect ending of any story I've ever read
Balchin has done so much to raise the standard of the popular novel
He can always be relied on to give us the set-up magnificently
Mr. Balchin is a writer of such considerable and varied gifts . . . He is certainly one of the most intelligent novelists
One of the hopes of British novel-writing . . . A writer of genius
He tells a story gloriously
A remarkable storyteller
I'd place him up there with Graham Greene
The missing writer of the Forties . . . Balchin's professional skill gives a meaning to brilliance which the word doesn't usually possess
The novelist of men at work
Perhaps the most successful British author to emerge during the war
Balchin can tell an exciting story as well as any novelist alive