Absolutely stunning . . . Assured, bold, and electrifying, If I Had Your Face marks the entrance of a bright new voice in fiction

Culturally fascinating, emotionally layered, gripping and smart

If you loved Crazy Rich Asians or Daisy Jones And The Six then this is going to be right up your street

Fascinating, eye-opening, compelling - like the film Parasite, If I Had Your Face is also an exposé of the class system in South Korea

I stayed up til 4am two nights in a row, absolutely riveted and astonished. Remarkable, brilliantly crafted and devastatingly exquisite

A brilliant debut

Each voice in this quartet cuts through the pages so cleanly and clearly that the overall effect is one of dangerously glittering harmony. The tale told here is as engrossing as a war chant, or a mosaic formed with blades, every piece a memento sharpened on those unyielding barriers between us and our ideal lives.

If I Had Your Face is hilarious, cuttingly observant, feminist, and all-around delightful. It is hard to write a book about four protagonists and make you care for all of them-yet somehow Cha succeeds.

One of the buzziest debuts of the year, If I Had Your Face transports readers to glittering, futuristic Seoul. Essential reading in what Jia Tolentino memorably called the age of Instagram face.

Compelling, understated, casually brutal, and very cynical. I love it.

Troubling, kaleidoscopic, and hugely enjoyable

It's difficult to believe this is Frances Cha's first novel-she's a masterful storyteller. I couldn't put IF I HAD YOUR FACE down; I was riveted by the stories of four young women navigating life in the extreme, competitive environment of modern Seoul. I loved reading about a world I knew nothing about, and from the first page, it was clear Cha was the best possible guide. I highly recommend this novel.

Wonderful... unsettling and deeply affecting - the writing is beautifully spare, and captures with such clarity what it means for these four young women to be taught to hope for everything and yet continuously to receive nothing

If I Had Your Face is a vivid, eviscerating depiction of social realism in contemporary Seoul. Frances Cha renders gender and class struggles with forensic detail, in a luminous voice both knowledgeable and compelling.

I love the way Frances Cha rotates between mindsets to look at how beauty and privilege influence the way women live, whilst maintaining a sly lightness

Make way for Frances Cha, an entrancing new voice who guides us into the complexities and contradictions of modern-day Seoul... I devoured it in a single sitting, and so will you.

I loved this book. It offers a fascinating window on a place and culture I knew little about, and yet from the first page it was intensely relatable - I recognised these women like friends, colleagues or sisters. Invigorating in its honesty and near-filmic in its descriptive power, If I Had Your Face is brilliantly-drawn tableau of the universalities of womanhood, the pressures we grapple with, and the way female bonds can carry us through.

Cha's striking first novel follows four young women in Seoul, South Korea trapped in a sphere of impossible beauty standards

A story of four women in Seoul and the way that economic and social realities determine the paths available to them

An intimate, panoramic debut... An enthralling read from the very first page.

A provoking, ultimately inspiring tale of women pushing back against oppressive customs both traditional and new . . . Frances Cha, like her quartet of narrators, has a rebel's heart

An endearing story of female friendship staged against a backdrop of elitism, sexism and the relentless quest for cosmetic perfection... Enthralling

An insightful, powerful story from a promising new voice

Cha's timely debut deftly explores the impact of impossible beauty standards and male-dominated family money on South Korean women

An eye-opening story of female friendship set against the brutal beauty standards of south Korea

Mesmerizing... weaves together the complexities and contradictions of modern-day Seoul, in an ultimately uplifting story of women living in defiance of oppressive customs

A gripping tale at once unfamiliar and unmistakably universal

A gripping portrait of four young women in South Korea... its focus on the tangled and complicated nature of female friendship is universally familiar and fascinating

Hypnotising... you won't want to put it down until the very last page

You'll find sisterhood at the heart of this ambitious book

Galgut is a terrifically agile and consistently interesting novelist, certain up there with Nadine Gordimer and JM Coetzee as a chronicler of his nation's anguished complexity

[A] magnificent new novel. Galgut sweeps his ruthlessly forensic gaze over each of the protagonists...as well as the country at large

Labelled a masterpiece and one of the best novels of the year within a week of publication... Galgut is on his finest form as he explores grief, despair and love in his inimitable style. Read this book if nothing else this year.

[A] gripping, profound tale... a damning commentary on South Africa's many broken promises

Ingenious... The most distinctive element of the novel, and its greatest pleasure, is the effortless way Galgut flows from mind to mind and body to body, whether male, female, pubertal, menopausal, maturing, ageing or dying. It's almost uncanny

Surrender to the music of Galgut's prose, however, and the rewards are considerable

Excellent... The Promise is a powerful novel of character... [an] ambitious novel but, remarkably, Galgut rarely needs to strain for impact... his ability deftly to shift perspective from one character to the next creates a distinctive polyphonic effect

A convincing and heartfelt novel

Politically chastening and technically superb. It's hard to see any novel beating it

A powerful read

This is the finest of all Damon Galgut's extraordinary novels. It reads as if the author has liberated himself from certain shackles he has needed in the past to convey the feelings of repression and social discomfort his people suffer... The writing - so impish, so playful - is a constant joy

Vivid and suggestive, moving and often very funny

Damon Galgut is the most worthy winner of the Booker prize we've seen for many years... The book trembles in the hand with its political relevance

A sobering allegory, to be sure, but also a giddy pleasure, thanks to Galgut's restlessly acrobatic narrative voice, which darts and zooms unpredictably around the action

One of the world's great writers

A dazzling feat of kaleidoscopic storytelling

I would have chosen this novel before it won the Booker... What makes it special is the humanity with which it is written and Galgut's cinematic prose, which shifts seamlessly from one perspective to the next

The Promise...is a remarkable tale of four generations of one South African family and of the country itself. Like his earlier books, it reveals him as a master of human complexity. No wonder it won the Booker

A complex, clever, wryly observant tale of one family's decline amid a nation's birth

[A] masterful, sweeping novel... a piercing dissection of a country at a decisive historical junction and the intersection of socio-political events and private life

The Promise is just 300 pages long, but Galgut shows his skills as a concise and piercing novelist by packing so much into this exceptional book

A layered, clever and sometimes uncomfortable read, but with a gripping story

A remarkably successful combination of formal discipline and finely observed characterisation, it was a worthy winner of the 2021 Booker prize

The judges of this year's Booker prize rightly crowned this outstanding multigenerational saga... The morally chewy scenario is given extra zest by an acrobatic narrative voice full of trickery

The Promise...is mesmerising

A joyful masterclass in fiction... a dizzying adventure that underlines one of the most appealing things about fiction: it is the closest we can ever get to inhabiting other perspectives

Inventive and full of energy

Gentle, precise, insightful, melancholy but warm