Look, I know how good Daniel Kraus is. I’ve been a fan since Rotters, and Whalefall was one of my favorite reads last year. I’m also aware that Angel Down won the Pulitzer. And not that it should matter (but maybe it does as more and more authors show the world their whole damn asses), but when my son and I saw Kraus do a reading at WorldCon in Chicago a couple of years ago, he was delightful, funny, thoughtful, and friendly as can be.

All of this to say, I should have expected Angel Down to be good, and I did, but I was not prepared for the overwhelming, transformative reading experience this novel is. I feel like my brain chemistry has been altered. This is a novel to be treasured, cherished, and read for generations to come. I know that sentence feels a little overwrought, but I stand by it.

What’s it about? Angel Down is a war novel, first and foremost. And like many great war novels—I’m thinking of books like The Painted Bird, The Tin Drum, and All Quiet On the Western Front—it’s a ferocious indictment of war, of the violence humans do to each other. This visceral, immersive World War I story follows Private Cyril Bagger, a cynical con man surviving the Western Front through deception and an utter lack of morals. Then Bagger and a small group of soldiers stumble on a wounded angel, tangled in barbed wire, glowing with otherworldly light on a blood-soaked battlefield in war-torn France. Bagger doesn’t know if the angel is a miracle or a potential military asset. He only knows that she must be protected at all costs.

What Kraus does with this setup is hard to describe. He breaks every writing “rule” I’ve ever heard of, yet the flow of the words pulls you along like a freight train. The novel is written as a single, unbroken sentence, in incandescent language that never lets you forget the utter, complete brutality of war. This is writing as catharsis, both astonishingly lyrical and grindingly grotesque.

Please, whatever you’re currently reading, put it down and read Angel Down. That other book will be there when you get back, and you’ll be a different person than you were before.