Darkness Falls From the Air

“Balchin writes about timeless things, the places in the heart.”—Ruth Rendell. A classic novel of the London Blitz that captures all the chaos, absurdity, and tragedy of life during the bombardment. Bill Sarratt, a civil servant, spends the war wining, dining, and wittily commenting on London’s shattered nightlife. But, as the bombs begin to fall closer and closer, Sarratt’s wife takes on a lover-and his life literally begins to crumble around him. “A writer of genius.”—John Betjeman. “Prose barer than Hemingway’s.”—Andrew Singer.