My favourite book of 2007 is this new translation of War and Peace... I'm relishing the incomparable mix of vivid description, penetrating social comment and philosophy. Translators give their wits and craft selflessly in the service of others' work; this is a triumph of fidelity and unpretentiousness

I'm absolutely blown away by this translation. The main thing about reading Volokhonsky and Pevear is that I feel I'm reading a book for the first time...it's a joy to read...There were moments in the book that hadn't quite established themselves until this [translation]...The sense of actually being in the skin of these people is phenomenally, brilliantly rendered by this new translation

There remains the greatest of all novelists-for what else can we call the author of War and Peace

To read him . . . is to find one's way home . . . to everything within us that is fundamental and sane

Tolstoy is a magnificent writer. he is never dull, never stupid, never tired, never pedantic, never theatrical!

A rollicking historical novel

This is, at last, a translation of War and Peace without the dreadful misunderstandings and "improvements" that plague all other translations of the novel into English. Pevear and Volokhonsky not only render the meanings and nuances of Tolstoy's language faithfully and beautifully, they also strive to transmit the structure and feel of his prose, down to the level of individual sentences and phrases (as much as the constraints of English allow). They do so because they understand that Tolstoy is in the details: that the essence of his art is embodied in all the resources of language, and that to "smooth" his language, to "fill in" what he leaves unsaid, or to "simplify" what he repeats, as all other translators do, is to betray his sui generis linguistic world and, therefore, that world's incomparably rich meanings. Pevear and Volokhonsky's supple and compelling translation is the closest that an English reader without Russian can get to Tolstoy's masterwork. This is a great achievement. It is hard to imagine how this translation could be superseded

First-rate! What an artist and what a psychologist

Readers who wonder why... Martin Amis and... Kiran Desai seem to flinch from writing about their own times should study Ms Seiffert

Rachel Seiffert is the poet and spokeswoman of those who find themselves on the wrong side of history...powerful, almost unbearably intense and wonderfully written

A quietly ambitious book

Despite the halting, low-key narration as Joe and Alice attempt to piece together the terms of their engagement, a simmering tension builds, though Seiffert is admirably less concerned with the revelation of atrocities than in how the soldier, having breached the first commandment, negotiates a return to ordinary life

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

This is a wonderful novel about slavery, freedom, parental loss and revenants