Arch and playful... [Yan Lianke] deploys offbeat humour, anarchic set pieces and surreal imagery to shed new light on dark episodes from modern Chinese history... A brave, brilliant novel

It’s a Chinese novel hailed across the planet as a masterpiece, and I’m normally the first to resist such an imposition before I’ve even opened the thing – but for once, the hype doesn’t go far enough... a devastating, brilliant slice of living history

No other writer in today's China has so consistently explored, dissected and mocked the past six and a half decades of Chinese communist rule... it is an extraordinary novel

One of the masters of modern Chinese literature

Stark, powerful and compelling... A privilege

A searing, allegorical view of Chinese society during some of the darkest moments of the Mao era. . . . Yan cements his reputation as one of China's most important—and certainly most fearless—living writers

Yan's new work is vital historical testimony

A biting satire about Chinese re-education camps during the Great Leap Forward that's as haunting as it is eye-opening

One of the masters of modern Chinese literature, Yan Lianke gives all the pleasures one gets from reading. He can extract humour from the bleakest situation. I whole-heartedly recommend this latest book

A rich reading experience and much light shed on this catastrophic period of Chinese history

Woven together, these “texts” reflect the catastrophe of the times and meditate on the meaning of integrity, truth, love and ethics when confronted with horror. It is an extraordinary novel

As a reader, you close the book with a profound sense of how ideology has permeated and changed very sector of collective human life, from trivial daily matters to the great ruptures of history

A powerful satire on ideology, veering between the grotesque and the horrific

I would absolutely recommend this to individual readers and reading groups alike. It’s not an easy read considering the subject matter but it is a very good one.

Wonderfully well written and hard to believe this is James Hannah's debut novel. Very early on I felt this was going to be a book I loved and I was right.

Sad and funny in equal measure but also quite uplifting about the power of the human spirit. An author who I am sure will continue to go from strength to strength.

This book broke my heart.

This is a really engrossing, interesting read and a book I just couldn't put down.

The story is sad, yet it is uplifting. The characters are flawed, yet human. I was very impressed by this novel. It is a delight to read and to recommend to others.

I was completely sucked into this book and flew through the pages. I loved it.

This book has moved me and it has changed me, and isn't that what it is all about? It is only March and I don't know if anything will top this one this year for me. Essential reading.

Take Trainspotting, cut out the swearing, and add a filter of nuanced meditations on love: welcome to The A to Z of You and Me. I absolutely loved this book.

'David Nicholls' school of commercial fiction. An accomplished piece of fiction, both entertaining and thought-provoking

Spare, poignant and with a quirky charm all of its own, it reminds us how kind people can be

Wonderful and heartbreaking.

Hannah writes with emotional acuity. Warm, wry, thoughtful and devastating in places, this is a life-enhancing missive from death's door.

The most richly fruited post-modern novel since Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherrys

A bold, impressive debut

As a debut novel, it is truly dazzling and Hermione Eyre has proved herself an author well worth watching out for

Profoundly moving