As eloquent a memorial to the anonymous little man in the Stalinist state as Dr Zhivago is to the artistic spirit in post-Czarist Russia and The First Circle to the scientific intelligentsia

Vasily Grossman is the Tolstoy of the USSR

Possibly the greatest chronicler of the second world war

Only Dante, in his account of Ugolino and his sons starving to death in a locked tower, has written of death from hunger with equal power

Supplies a wealth of information about the social context and Soviet terminology

Beautiful and philosophical narrative of lives and lamentation... a thoughtful polemic

This is a genuinely visionary work of art, and a worthy sequel to Grossman's magnum opus Life and Fate

This is a story that needs to be heard

This tremendous book has the power to make you weep at man's inhumanity to man and, at the same time, rejoice that freedom does not die. Thanks to Robert Chandler and his co-translators, Elizabeth Chandler and Anna Aslanyan, the Russian voice positively sings.

A powerful work...It shows us the perplexity of an old man coming home after 30 years in a gulag to find society much changed and is the work of a true visionary.

Shot through with a fizzing mix of philosophy and comedy

An unusual, loveable debut...that explores the complexities of family relationships and the weight of memory

An unusual, loveable debut about a father and his daugther on the East Coast of Scotland...superbly written with a small cast of memorable characters

The beautiful debut by Scottish novelist Sue Peebles. This tale of a daughter caring for her father who has suffered a stroke is psychologically true and elegantly portrayed

The best debut I read...sharp, tender, wicked, and beautifully poised prose that reads like the work of an accomplished novelist

As far as literary fiction goes, this is both incredibly literary and amazingly enjoyable… Lyrical, poetic, and always written with the same bittersweet quality which captured my attention right at the start, this is an absolute gem of a book… Clearly, this is about the highest possible recommendation, whether or not you like cricket… When I got to the end, the only issue I had with the book was that I wished it hadn’t finished

There is much to enjoy in Sri Lankan Karunatilaka’s energetic debut novel… The book bristles with grouchy humour, laconic observations on Sri Lanka’s political troubles and the pathos of coming to the end of life. Steering just the right side of sentiment, it is both an elegy to lost ambitions and a paean to madcap dreams

A rollercoaster of a novel

A deliberately rambling account of a dying sportswriter’s attempts to get to the truth of the disappearance of a Sri Lankan bowler... It’s brilliant