Sunjeev Sahota's writing is the stuff of miracles. Emotional and heartrending, China Room juggles questions of love, debt, and what it means to build a home alongside the history that carries us. China Room is a propulsive dream, intricately wrought, and Sahota is a maestro.

China Room is a rare novel that makes you pause in its beauty.

Sahota is a truly original novelist, his prose sparingly precise in its beauty, steeped in kindness and deep humanity.

With poise, restraint and deep intelligence, Sahota feeds us big, difficult themes - segregation and freedom, revolution and empire - in a form that is unsweetened, fresh and nourishing. Surely this, his third novel, will propel him up the shortlists to the prizewinning status he deserves.

An extraordinarily gifted writer... Sahota's ability to shine a phrase is not bought for the usual steep formalist price, at the expense of simplicity, intimate feeling, and solid representation. He's both camera and painter, in a literary world that often separates those novelistic tasks.

Sahota combines great writing with amazing storytelling... his books are intelligent and beautifully written and very poised but also incredibly immersive, gripping and very moving. An epic in miniature, China Room is the kind of novel that reminds you why you fell in love with reading in the first place.

Novels this good are rare.

Sahota's prose is a finely modulated instrument that moves from subtle minutiae to cosmic magnitude... Exhibiting the narrative control and psychological acuity of Rohinton Mistry and Jhumpa Lahiri, Sahota's tale of trans-generational trauma is quietly devastating.

Sahota's beautifully crafted novel dovetails two stories from different eras... Both characters are prisoners of circumstances but, in their hunger for redemption, become emblematic of the human condition.

Such a thrilling combination of beauty and heartbreak. It's breathtaking.

Sahota gives his period narrative the same effortless immediacy as his present-day one, yet his novel works by stealth, quietly beguiling the reader into an almost painful intimacy... I loved it.

There is a scrupulous subtlety about that way that Sahota refuses to let his historical characters act as though they are in a historical novel.

An intense drama of classic themes - love, family, survival, and betrayal - told with passion and precision in Sahota's economical, lyrical prose.

A gripping read... a memorable and poignant depiction of how family histories can echo through the generations.

Outstanding... dense with intricate layers. As author, Sahota brilliantly plays with access to knowledge, to history. China Room promises to haunt and to illuminate.

China Room is very good at examining the trauma held in one family, whether it be personal or housed in a home, village, or country. Sahota seems to acknowledge that although we are not doomed to repeat the past, each subsequent generation feels a measure of the hardship that the last generation faced... a well-developed story of two lives that touch one another in ways that that can never be clearly seen.

Engrossing, intricate, excellent.

Sunjeev Sahota's The Year of the Runaways propelled him on to the 2015 Booker shortlist. His latest, China Room, a multi-generational masterpiece ... could well see him nominated again.

Political currents seep subtly in and the cumulative effect is potent

Exquisitely written

Sunjeev Sahota balances weighty ideas about cultural prisons and self-determination with hushed, featherweight prose

[A] hauntingly beautiful novel

Sahota's third novel has prose so beautiful it stops you dead

Tackling many relevant issues, it's a heart-warming read

Poignant, totally joyful, this is a great read

A feel-good read, with great characters to care about, it takes current issues seriously but adds plenty of humour

[It leaves] the reader with that fuzzy feeling you want from a feel-good book. Fans of her previous hit, The Authenticity Project, will not be disappointed

A feel-good tale about the power of real-life connections

You can always rely on Pooley to deliver not just wonderful, lively characters but a story that leaves you feeling uplifted and hopeful

Batuman has taken what made The Idiot so brilliant, distilled it, and created an equally brilliant new work. Either/Or is unbridled joy.

Funny... Unforgettable... Batuman is particularly good on sex and sexual politics... The star feature is the narration... garrulous, rambunctious... full of baroque riffs and digressions.

A fresh voice is a rare thing, and Elif Batuman is one such.

Either/Or is extremely funny and delightfully ludic, as it probes the very act of reading from the point of view of confused university student Selin.

I was desperately looking forward to Elif Batuman's Either/Or, and it more than lived up to it.

Re-encountering Selin...felt like being reunited with an old friend.

Hilarious.

I greatly enjoyed the comic zing of Elif Batuman's delightful Either/Or

Witty, intelligent and funny... [Selin's] inner monologue is addictive enough to read a thousand more pages of, and I can only cross my fingers that this isn't the last instalment of the series.

Just as funny and self-aware and clever as The Idiot.

Funny, wry and insightful

Laugh out loud…hilarious and thoughtful