This novel deserves to become a classic.

Austin's masterly account of a tortured soul is matched only by his rich portrayal of the terrible, untameable ocean.

The briny sea in all its treacherous, glistening glory soaks through every page of this book... This is a superb novel that will be loved by all those who are drawn to the ocean.

An impressively accomplished compelling and haunting homage to forces beyond understanding or control.

A haunting work of literary fiction, this is an extraordinary first novel by a former seaman with a passion for his subject.

This author was a seaman and has a passion for the sea. This is a tale of a sailor who comes to be seen by his mates as a danger because there is something mysterious about him, enigmatic. Accidents and rumours of disaster gather around him. Anyone who has ever been drawn by the fascinations of the oceans and their secrets will love this book and its strong haunting prose. This is the best first novel I have read in years.

A convincing account, lyrical yet exact, of the making of a scientist. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky may not be a household name, but the author has set him squarely before us as a living, thinking, ingenious human being

Wonderful. Historical fiction that wears history lightly

Well-written . . . moving and expressive

Hilarious

Sprawling, sometimes goofy, always seditious novel of modern life in the remotest corner of China . . . Set Rabelais down in the mountains of, say, Xinjiang, mix in some Günter Grass, Thomas Pynchon and Gabriel García Márquez, and you’re in the approximate territory of Lianke’s latest exercise in épatering the powers that be . . . A satirical masterpiece

The novel's depth lies in its ability to express an unbearable sorrow, even while constantly making the reader laugh out loud ... a truly miraculous novel

Yan Lianke weaves a passionate satire of today's China, a marvellous circus where the one eyed-man is king . . . Brutal. And wickedly funny

Lenin's Kisses shines with both the lyrical flourishes of magical realism and the keenly sharpened knives of great satire. The reader joins the inhabitants of the village of Liven as they confront the great upheavals of 20th Century Chinese history armed with both whimsy and their obsessive determination to prevail. This tale is at once breathtaking and seriously funny. Anyone who wishes to understand the psychic world-view of the modern People's Republic of China must read this fine novel.

With its distinctive language, structure and narrative approach, Lenin's Kisses presents a distictive version of 'rural china' and 'revolutionary China', even while establishing a new literary 'native China'

Yan Lianke sees and describes his characters with great tenderness . . . this talented and sensitive writer exposes the absurdity of our time

An unconventional blur of fact and fiction, How Should a Person Be? is an engaging cocktail of memoir, novel and self-help guide

A candid collection of taped interviews and emails, random notes and daring exposition…fascinating

Provocative, funny and original

A serious work about authenticity, how to lead a moral life and accept one’s own ugliness

An exuberantly productive mess, filtered and reorganised after the fact...rather than working within a familiar structure, Heti has gone out to look for things that interest her and "put a fence around" whatever she finds

A sharp, witty exploration of relationships, art and celebrity culture

[Sheila Heti] has an appealing restlessness, a curiosity about new forms, and an attractive freedom from pretentiousness or cant…How Should a Person Be? offers a vital and funny picture of the excitements and longueurs of trying to be a young creator in a free, late-capitalist Western City…This talented writer may well have identified a central dialectic of twenty-first-century postmodern being

Funny…odd, original, and nearly unclassifiable…Sheila Heti does know something about how many of us, right now, experience the world, and she has gotten that knowledge down on paper, in a form unlike any other novel I can think of

Playful, funny... absolutely true

Sheila's clever, openhearted commentary will draw wry smiles from readers empathetic to modern life's trials and tribulations

Amusing and original