In poems of poised lyricism, the book revealed an obsession with the line between beauty and violence, but also a fear of erasure, finding consolation in poetry’s potential to commemorate and commit to memory… Like Heaney’s, O’Riordan’s best poems reveal an unusually precise attention to the texture, weight and subtle music of language. “Glance from the barrel where the bones are bled”, begins “Ghost Ranch”. Read those lines of O’Riordan’s aloud and they force your whole mouth into movement, a trick that the Irish master all but perfected, bringing language to life… O’Riordan has a genuine gift.

Adam O'Riordan's poems combine verbal grace with powerful feelings and a keen intelligence that extends from the personal to the political with admirable ease

Elegant, beautifully-turned poems that match an easy technique with a sophisticated intelligence

Adam O’Riordan is the real thing

A rip-roaring Swiftian satire from a contemporary Chinese master... Yan Lianke, one of China's most forthright and versatile novelists, enlists extravagant comedy and far-fetched fable to propel his critique of a society where "power and money have colluded to steal people's souls"

An epic tale of miracles, madness, greed and corruption set against the backdrop of runaway urbanization... Even the most majestic of sights in this novel are distractions designed to mask the pervasive moral rot that lies just beneath the surface

In this comic fable of modern China… Yan has absurdist fun with the impact that policy shifts have on cremation, the military, elections, and the town’s efforts to woo American investors… It’s mordant satire from a brave fabulist

China is put under the microscope in this exuberant and imaginative novel about the sudden growth of a town

In an uproarious cavalcade of boom and (Yan hints) bust, the four Kong brothers and their resourceful womenfolk mastermind the ascent of their home town. Explosion becomes China in microcosm... The novel’s farce, fantasy and fun stay just a step or two ahead of China’s gravity-defying truth. Not surprisingly, Yan’s work has been repeatedly banned in China

Both madcap satire and engrossing dynastic epic, as three rival clans compete to turn the idyllic Chinese village of Explosion into a booming megacity

This darkly absurd history trucks freely with the fantastic - the city's airport is built in less than a week - but many of the more brazen events are taken straight from the news... Yan Lianke's burlesque of a nation driven insane by money is equally a satire of some of the excesses of the Chinese Revolution

Yan Lianke paints a metaphoric and absurd portrait of contemporary China so obsessed with growth that its moral values have been left by the wayside. Yan Lianke’s poetic prose rewards those who read to the end of this great novel of rare insight

An epic page-turner... Yan's mesmerizing ability to pull readers into this raw, subversive, not completely fictional world will continue to build his international audience. Mo Yan was the first Chinese national to be awarded the Nobel for Literature; Yan might just be next

Yan returns with renewed vigor to the job of lampooning communist orthodoxy, capitalist ambition, and ‘contemporary China's incomprehensible absurdity.’...[The Explosion Chronicles] has the absurdist feel of an Ionesco or Dürrenmatt piece, though without any of the heavy-handed obviousness. Indeed, his satire is careful and crafty ... it can be read as a kind of Swiftian satire... Brilliant

This novel is a thoroughly fantastical satire where absurdity reflects the profound truth... Beautiful and strongly poetic

[Yan Lianke] manipulates irony, absurdity, and the fantastical with ease

This is an epic tale of miracles, madness, greed and corruption set against the backdrop of runaway urbanisation… Explosion is not as unrelentingly dark as The Four Books, but it may be even more politically daring…. In Explosion brightly hued roses may bloom out of season when something good happens, but the vision is closer to a nightmare. Even the most majestic of sights in this novel are distractions designed to mask the pervasive moral rot that lies just beneath the surface

An extraordinary insight into modern China

Daring and often hilarious

Brimming with absurdity, intelligence and wit, The Explosion Chronicles considers the high stakes of passion and power, the consequences of corruption and greed, the dynamics of love and hate, as well as the seemingly boundless excesses of capitalist culture.

A blistering condemnation of political corruption and excess

The sweeping mythic style and cartoon-like effects are exhilarating, and...the realities of life in China are sharply conveyed

A fast-paced, ambitious, hallucinatory mystery

Marvellous, original and intelligent. Kunzru writes like a master storyteller... There's simply nothing [he] couldn't manage in prose

Publisher's description. Electrifying, subversive and wildly original, White Tears is a ghost story and a love story, a story about lost innocence and historical guilt. This unmissable novel penetrates the heart of a nation's darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge and exploitation, and holding a mirror up to the true nature of America today.

Compulsively readable, masterly - a tour de force

Riveting from the very first page, I was completely addicted... A literary thriller and a timely, unsparing excavation of the very real spectre of race in America's past and present. White Tears is proof that Kunzru is one of the finest novelists of his generation...

Hari Kunzru is an incredibly versatile writer who is alert to the inequalities in the world... Powerful and complex, White Tears is a novel about abuses of wealth and power. Brilliantly orchestrated, unforgettable and devastating

Hari Kunzru is one of our most important novelists

Kunzru's engagingly wired prose and agile plotting sweep all before them

Elizabeth Strout's My Name is Lucy Barton shouldn't work, but its frail texture was a triumph of tenderness, and sent me back to her excellent Olive Kitteridge

A rich account of a relationship between mother and daughter, the frailty of memory and the power of healing

This physically slight book packs an unexpected emotional punch

A novel offering more hope

My Name Is Lucy Barton intrigues and pierces with its evocative, skin-peeling back remembrances of growing up dirt-poor.

Masterly