Heart-rending tale from a talented author

One of the most beautiful novels of the season. This is a powerful story of love and friendship set against a backdrop of war and revolution in Amritsar in 1919

Bali Rai has deep understanding of the conflicting cultures he depicts, and is a skilful and beguiling storyteller. His novel works admirably on several levels. Although two of his three chosen lives are fated to end sadly, the story as a whole is impressive, enjoyable and enlightening

There is lovely, brutal detail, as well as a grand swoop over the timeline of Ireland and America, just like the kind of film they just don't make anymore

This is Ireland's most famous living writer tackling one of the most crucial periods in history

Exuberant... for those who like their wines full-bodied and their meals rich and zesty... earthly secrets of strength, suffering, passion and cooking in a humorous and well-drawn portrait of a woman who loves as well as she cooks

Subverts macho morality with refreshingly unexpected narrative twists magical realism... pacing that rivals Romancing the Stone

An enchanting book, an open-eyed fairy story

Wonderful... hard to put down... it is rare to come across a book so unusual

A book of great maturity, beautifully alive to the fragility of happiness and all forms of violence... Everyone should read Saturday

The supreme novelist of his generation

Dazzling... Profound and urgent

A brilliant novel.It is McEwan writing on absolute top form

Refreshing and engrossing, dense with revelation. Superb

A rich book, sensuous and thoughtful... McEwan has found in Saturday the right form to showcase his dazzling talents

McEwan is word-perfect at handling the awkward comedy of this relationship and, as ever, turning it into something far more disturbing

Two characters so vibrant they step straight off the page

McEwan's brilliance as a novelist lies in his ability to isolate discrete moments in life and invest them with incredible significance

McEwan's style is lean and clear...every sentence feels carefully crafted, the words all perfectly in place

A tightly focused human drama... McEwan gives the reader access to both characters' thoughts with his usual skill, and the comedy of embarrassment, or of the kind of erotic misunderstanding that Milan Kundera used to specialise in, quickly disappears as the marital bed begins to seem more and more ominous... The bedroom scene itself is carried off brilliantly

A fine book, homing in with devastating precision on a kind of Englishness which McEwan understands better than any other living writer, the Englishness of deceit, evasion, repression and regret. In On Chesil Beach McEwan has combined the intensity of his narrowly focused early work with his more expansive later flowered to devastating effect

McEwan is the kind of author who can say more in a sentence than most can say in a chapter...This is a thoughtful book which provokes thought. But more immediately than that, this is a book which, while managing to be very funny, gives us a wonderful and moving portrait of a specific time, and two of its hostages, and of how to make a mess of love

McEwan conveys the near-numinous significance of a single moment with quiet, almost unbearable grace

A heavenly read