One of the most richly allusive novels you’re likely to encounter... [a] thrillingly imaginative exploration of creativity

An adventure novel of ideas… Rollicking, a passionate defense of literature as an essential element of public life and, more generally, of art in a time of numbers – when the market establishes not just the price but the value of necessary things like art and thought. “Life is serious, art is joyful,” he says, and that sense of joy carries over to Mr Vila-Matas’ novel. He strikes a difficult balance between being philosophical and being lighthearted and entertaining – it’s what gives his writing sophistication and panache

A light-hearted novel about art and the avant-garde… Showing us a part of the art world that he finds a bit preposterous, but also charming, and even important [Vila-Matas] chooses humour in a way that allows him to have big ideas while relentlessly making fun of them

Like W.G. Sebald, Geoff Dyer and, more recently, writers such as Rachel Cusk, Teju Cole and Ben Lerner, Vila-Matas manages to create a productive uncertainty in the reader’s mind through his disorientating effects... One of the distinct pleasures of Vila-Matas’ books is that they function as little libraries stuffed with other authors’ works… His novels now are less like stories than like experiences of a particular atmosphere. [The Illogic of Kassel] asserts its own strange rhythm and stands as a valuable addition to Vila-Matas’ work

This summer I plan to relax with two short works by the charmingly playful, lucidly destructive Spanish novelist, Enrique Vila-Matas... Truth, fiction, history, memoir: these are always charmingly unstable categories in Vila-Matas’s writing

[A] beguiling, rebellious sojourn into the underground soul of the avant-garde

A blend of memoir, fiction and a sharp observation of human behavior… A warm and engaging read, littered with gentle humour.

bizarre and often surreal, these stories act as an intriguing exploration into Murakami’s wacky mind and thought processes

Wind/Pinball makes a great introduction to Murakami for new readers, and is a real treat for long-time fans

From the very beginning, it seems, Murakami has had the ability to make a story in which nothing happens seem completely irresistible. And to make almost any degree of bizarreness seem completely natural

Both are honest and witty novels, colourfully written as ever, and come highly recommended to Murakami fans.

The introduction alone makes Wind Pinball worth reading… Two perfectly shaped novellas, as experimental and pleasantly offbeat as they are easy to enjoy in Ted Goosen’s crystalline translation… Both tales showcase the loneliness and erotic pull that paint the sets of so many of Murakami’s surreal stages.

Which other author can remind you simultaneously of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and JK Rowling, not merely within the same chapter but on the same page?

A provocatively dystopian novel that depicts a disturbingly nice world.

Sufficient testament to a writer who is…producing some of his most powerful work.

A subtle, topical, thought-provoking and painfully uncomfortable novel.

You can’t help feeling that this is an important book, and it’s hugely compelling… Worthy of its status as a Booker long-listee.

Jacobson’s most significantly Jewish book and quite possibly his masterpiece.

The persistent reader will be duly rewarded, as the denouement reveals a hidden logic and the book climaxes with a brilliant literary (and philosophical) coup.

Contemporary literature is overloaded with millenarian visions of destroyed landscapes and societies in flames, but Jacobson has produced one that feels frighteningly new by turning the focus within: the ruins here are the ruins of language, imagination, love itself.

The savagery of his imagery and his conclusions are impossible to forget, and maybe even to deny.

Confounds expectations but confirms Jacobson’s reputation.

I loved this book. A compelling tale that is bound to be a hot contender for the Booker.

Impressive, disturbingly timely – a massive step aside and a noticeable step up from most of his other fiction.

A pivotal – and impressive change of direction for [Jacobson].

Sentence by sentence, he remains perhaps the best British author around.

This is Jacobson at his provocative, surprising, brilliant best.

Thrilling written and the most ambitious work on the shortlist… Once you’ve worked out what’s going on, you’ll be gripped by its hints of an anti-Semitic armageddon.

It’s stark and daring.

A brilliant conspiracy yarn examining the manipulation of collective memory.

It's not just the subject of this book that will shock Jacobson fans, its distinct narrative style also comes as a surprise. A pleasant one at that.

A dystopian vision, haunting and memorable

It’s a triumph of creative writing. I finished it and started it again

Jacobson has written a subtle, topical, thought-provoking and painfully uncomfortable novel

chilling and provocative, Jacobson is at the height of his powers here

Hadley, who won the Hawthornden prize this month for The Past, is literary fiction’s best kept secret. Don’t let her fellow novelists keep her for themselves.

[The Past is] magnificently done: half celebration, half elegy.

There are hints of Larkin in her tender descriptions of landscape and imaginative responses to the ineffable… All her books are wonderful.

This is a hugely enjoyable and keenly intelligent novel, brimming with the vitality of unruly desire.