The title is a biblical quotation from the Book of Numbers, Chapter 22, Verses 23-31: "And the ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, ...".

With its Southern Gothic setting, critics have compared it favorably with novels by American authors William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor.

Cave's essay The Flesh Made Word - written for a radio broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in 1996 and reprinted in King Ink II in 1997 - includes Cave's recollection of writing And the Ass Saw the Angel: In 1985, I went to live in Berlin, where I got it into my head to write a novel, and for the next three years I locked away myself in a room in Kreuzberg and wrote it.

It was about a mad, hermetic mute boy called Euchrid Eucrow, who, having been denied the faculty of speech, eventually explodes in a catharsis of rage and brings to its knees the religious community in which he lives.

[3]And the Ass Saw the Angel tells the story of Euchrid Eucrow, a mute born to an abusive drunken mother and a father obsessed with animal torture and the building of dangerous traps.

The lyrics of some of the songs from the first few albums of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (From Her to Eternity, The Firstborn Is Dead and Your Funeral... My Trial), are extensions of the ideas represented in the novel.

In an interview with BOMB magazine, Cave noted, "There are a number of voices in the book: first person narrative by Euchrid, third person authorial voice, quotations usually from the Bible, either real or ersatz, constant changes in tone or approach to language, depending on who is talking.

There’s a cartoon image to many of the characters––Beth, who I see as the idealized young girl, perfect and innocent, seen through the obsessive eyes of Euchrid.

In 1998, Mute records released these same four chapters, together with music by Mick Harvey and Ed Clayton-Jones on CD as "And the Ass Saw the Angel" (EUCHRID1).