My advice is to plunge straight into Volume 1, Swann's Way there are many who swear the experience has permanently enriched their lives

One of the cornerstones of the Western literary canon

Surely the greatest novelist of the 20th century

As close to being a definitive English version of the great novel as we are likely to get

Proust isn't just the most profound of novelists, but the most entertaining, too. No reader ever forgets his most killingly funny scenes... Proust sinks deepest in readers because the book is so exhaustively analytical, so ceaselessly truthful. Not the least of it is the book's heavenly length, so that it inevitably takes over your life for a long stretch... the experience of reading it becomes, in itself, an unforgettable thing

How does Murakami manage to make poetry while writing of contemporary life and emotions? I am weak-kneed with admiration

[A] mesmeric story

Visionary...a bold and generous book

‘I have never read anyone else like her . . . She was an opener of doors, doors that seemed they might always be shut, doors shut so tight they seemed not to be doors at all’

‘Her legacy is total excellence . . . she is magnificent, her emotional intelligence is second to none and her bravery was equal to her artistry’

‘Morrison almost single-handedly took American fiction forward in the second half of the twentieth century’

‘[Toni Morrison’s] irreverence was godly’

A beautiful book and it's beautifully written

My favourite book of all time

Morrison's stunning trilogy is an evocation of black life over the past four centuries. It defies summary. Completed almost 25 years ago, these novels top anything produced by any American writer including Hemingway, Updike and DeLillo

[A] beautiful, haunting novel

More than one of Morrison's books could be classed as masterpieces, but this one is famous for a reason: everyone should read it

A magnificent achievement...an American masterpiece

A triumph

She melds horror and beauty in a story that will disturb the mind forever

Toni Morrison is not just an important contemporary novelist but a major figure in our national literature

A work of genuine force. . .Beautifully written

There is something great in Beloved: a play of human voices, consciously exalted, perversely stressed, yet holding true. It gets you

Superb...A profound and shattering story that carries the weight of history...Exquisitely told