Ironic, witty, super-intelligent

It is impossible not to be awed by these stories. Life, marriage, love, death, are all described here in the most amazingly unexpected ways; it seems at times that Adam, like the greatest of the great writers, has some kind of supernatural facility that allows him to see through to the pitch black core of things and to create a crystalline portrait of what he witnesses

Unputdownable is an overused word, but at their best these stories are completely gripping.

Johnson has a rare combination of inventiveness, intellectual pyrotechnics and emotional sophistication . . . These stories are treasures.

Johnson packs more voice in his stories than most authors do in a novel

Masterful

...formidable, meaty tales that cling on and don’t let go.

[Adam Johnson] is always perceptive and brave; his lines always sing and strut and sizzle and hush and wash and blaze over the reader.

Adam Johnson . . . demonstrates again his boundless imagination, his ability to capture an entire personality in a few perfectly chosen details, and his gift for making foreign territory feel utterly familiar. Johnson is willing to go into real darkness and send a beacon back from the depths of tragedy, and his voice is as inevitable and fresh as anything being written today.

Entrancing.

[Adam Johnson] serves up six sinewy stories that shock and surprise in his edgy, inviting Fortune Smiles . . . compulsively readable.

[A] bold and deeply wise collection

Startlingly, blazingly original.

[A] riveting collection of short stories ... darkly imagined, slightly surreal

Exhilarating ... His mastery of setting simply wowed me.

Marked by the conflicts of heart and mind, and the exuberant quality of its compassionate prose.

Compulsively readable ... Johnson serves up six sinewy stories that shock and surprise.

A rare combination of inventiveness, intellectual pyrotechnics and emotional sophistication ... these stories are treasures.

Bittersweet, elegant, full of ward-won wisdom: this is no ordinary book either.

Hefty and memorable ...the stories provide one of the truest satisfactions of reading: the opportunity to sing into worlds we otherwise know little or nothing about.

Terrific. Shows exactly why Johnson is rated as one of the hottest writers of his generation.

The perfect antidote to Trump.

This book is a compelling study of the relationship between artist and spectator, and how suffering feeds into art, and he’s made of it a bravura performance… Extraordinary.

A haunting, intense and Man Booker International prize-winning novel from a great writer.

Incredibly fast paced, and the dialogue comes at you like a machine gun… It is powerful in its own right.

Abrasive, unexpected and eventually heartbreaking, it is a masterclass in characterisation and structure, and it beat off some exceptionally strong competition to win the prize… A Horse Walks into a Bar is quite unlike any other Grossman book except in one important respect: it’s another masterpiece.

Excellent.

Pitch-perfect black comedy