The Time Of The Seventh Angel

5 Star Review

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Editorial Book Review:

By Fabiana Simmons

There is something almost impossible to look away from about a novel written by a 90-year-old man who began it when the Berlin Wall still stood, Gorbachev hadn't yet risen to power, and the Cold War showed no signs of ending. David Gurr started this book nearly half his lifetime ago. The world it predicted has since arrived. That fact alone gives The Time of the Seventh Angel a weight that no amount of craft alone could manufacture.

And the craft is very much here. Gurr has been ranked alongside John le Carré, Len Deighton, and Graham Greene for good reason. He knows how to build a thriller that thinks, and this one thinks about as hard as fiction gets. A mysterious figure appears in Ukraine and brings the secret police to their knees. An impregnable nuclear command center is breached. Washington, Moscow, and Jerusalem are forced to confront a possibility none of their intelligence systems can explain or contain. The question hanging over everything is one of the oldest and most unsettling questions a story can ask: what happens when the machinery of human power encounters something it simply cannot process?

What makes the book feel genuinely prophetic rather than merely prescient is how specific the details are. The Kremlin opponent whose very name Gurr's yellowed manuscript predicted. Ukraine at the center of civilizational tension. The nuclear clock ticking closer to midnight than anyone is comfortable admitting. He wasn't guessing. He was paying the kind of attention that most people in power consistently fail to pay.

This is a book that asks for patience and rewards it generously. It sits at the rare intersection of literary ambition and geopolitical urgency, and it earns both labels honestly.

Reading a final novel by a 90-year-old literary master who has spent decades watching his predictions come true is its own kind of extraordinary experience. Don't miss it.

About the Author

David Gurr

David Gurr is an internationally acclaimed novelist. His first book, Troika, was shortlisted for the prestigious CWA British Silver Dagger (1979). Also, the Canadian Governor General’s Literary Award (for The Ring Master, 1987), and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Caribbean and Canada, 1990, for The Voice of the Crane). Born in London in 1936, he emigrated to Canada at Christmas, 1947. He enrolled as a cadet in the Royal Canadian Naval College, HMCS Venture, in 1954; obtained a degree in Mathematics, Physics, and Political Science from the University of Victoria, 1964. After driving destroyers and analyzing computers for the Navy, he resigned his commission in 1972 to design and build unique West Coast houses. The Time of the Seventh Angel is the ninth book under his own name. He lives with his wife, Diane Tolomeo, and a garden in Victoria, British Columbia. In odd moments, he dances the Argentine Tango. Further odd details may be found at the David Gurr website.