Fires every nerve ending while summoning in the reader the sheer sense of how amazing it is to be alive

Discovering Anthony Powell’s “A Dance to the Music of Time” has been one of the greatest pleasures of my reading life. The cool elegance of the prose, the deliciously dry humour, the confident choreography of his characters make for an incomparable treat.

“A Dance To The Music of Time” is an epic, elegant masterpiece, so full of lightness and comedy that you're unprepared for how it quietly wrecks your heart.

Powell’s novel sequence is at once a rich chronicle of 20th-century English social life and an intricately wrought work of art. It is also extremely funny, in its sly fashion.

The novels of Powell’s “A Dance to the Music of Time” themselves move hand in hand in intricate measure through the last century, bearing wisdom and understanding for the present. In an ever-quicker, ever-shallower world, his steadiness and wit reliably escort the reader into depth and patience. Nobody gives pattern to the spectacle of human existence like Powell.

A masterful stylist and a wise, often hilarious observer of human nature and his times, Anthony Powell is an under-appreciated literary gem. The pleasures and dramas of the “Dance” continue to illuminate daily life.

Reading “A Dance to the Music of Time” was such a joyous experience, I remember wishing there'd been more than twelve volumes.

I re-read the "Dance" every five years or so and always find something new – the world has changed but the characters are evergreen. Everybody has a Widmerpool in their life.

He has wit, style, and panache, in a world where those qualities are in permanently short supply

[A] comic masterpiece

Comic, satisfying, thought-provoking, addictive

It's his supreme skill in mastering a lengthily interwoven chronicle, the evolution of such a range and variety of pin-point characters, the wit and the cultural ambition that give the novel a unique place in English Literature.

Very funny . . . Exceptionally good . . . Delightful

Brilliant

Middle England is a full-blooded state of the nation novel, and it brings us bang up-to-date

Coe is an extraordinarily deft plotter . . . he tackles big ambitious themes, in this case the effect of politics on people's lives, and political opinions on personal relations

The beauty of Jonathan Coe's new novel, Middle England, is the way it tracks the seemingly unconnected moments that brought Britain to its knees - and with devastating delicacy, too

The great chronicler of Englishness

A copper bottomed masterpiece

Coe's comic critique of a divided country dazzles . . . properly laugh-out-loud funny . . . it is also incisive and brilliant about our divided country and the deep chasms revealed by the vote to leave. Do not miss

The first great Brexit novel

This book is sublimely good. State of the (Brexit) nation novel to end them all, but also funny, tender, generous, so human and intelligent about age and love as well as politics

Jonathan Coe's Middle England is brilliantly insightful on the times we are living in

Let me add to the chorus of praise for Jonathan Coe's new book Middle England. Easily my favourite of his since What a Carve Up! Which did for Thatcherism what Middle England does for Brexit

An astute, enlightened and enlightening journey into the heart of our current national identity crisis. Both moving and funny. As we'd expect from Coe

From post-industrial Birmingham to the London riots and the current political gridlock, it takes in family, literature and love in a comedy for our times

Coe can make you smile, sigh, laugh; he has abundant sympathy for his characters

This book is sublimely good. State of the (Brexit) nation novel to end them all, but also funny, tender, generous, so human and intelligent about age and love as well as politics

Nation, published in 2008 (this year's award catchment runs from August 2008-September 2009), is an extraordinarily complicated tale about God, tradition and loss. Yet it is told with beautiful simplicity and rollicking readability.

Funny and profound, Nation is much more than an adventure story, pitting reason against religion and offering an alternative perspective on world history and culture.

As Pratchett says: "Thinking. This book contains some. Whether you try it at home is up to you." His wit is on every page; his world surpasses ours, his writing is weird and wonderful. No, weirdly wonderful. It is gripping but put the book down to ponder the thoughts inside to unearth a parallel universe. Terry Pratchett is worth more than his idiom; his teachings contain more philosophical thought than I would have ever thought possible.

A brilliant first novel

A slick debut pulled off with brio, Swan Song is glamorous, vivid and sometimes even daring in its intelligence

A dazzling read

Greenberg-Jephcott’s debut is fizzing with energy and ideas…The novel has style and substance in spades.

With a grounding in history, it is a fascinating read about the deepest secrets of an iconic author.

Intoxicating

Swan Song is utterly divine.It swept me up and I just couldn't put it down ... it is the writing in this debut novel that astounds most of all. It is vivid, addictive and whips up a terrific portrait of a deeply contradictory and complex man, contrasting scenes from his unorthodox childhood with those from the gilded bubble he ended up in that he lanced through his own actions.

A sumptuous look at the icons of Manhattan's high society scene in the mid-20th century ... An immersive readthat will have you questioning real histories versus the ones we create for ourselves.