Exhibits his talents at their provocative best

Nevil Shute's books always have a real hero...intensely romantic along with the realism, intensely real along with the romanticism, and peculiarly absorbing

Very funny...I cracked up laughing on the tube

A heart-rending tale of torture, human fortitude and forbearance, inhumanity and hardship

That supreme storyteller, Nevil Shute...I could hardly bear to put the book down. I read it voraciously for days

Remarkable books...I share a fierce personal regard for Nevil Shute

A novel which, while aiming at popularity, respected its readership and was possessed of a decent level of craft

It is an admirable book and in its best passages is inspired and haunting

Generations of women survive, most movingly, in the wreckage left by total war

Beautifully constructed... Franck has a remarkable ability to capture the nuances of human behaviour,and her subtle depiction of Helene's growing coldness, or "blindness", and the wider blindness of a society heading for disaster, is utterly compelling

Read it and weep

With its intriguing plot and strong characterisation, Julia Franck's novel depicts beautifully both personal and historical tragedies, and gives us a compelling portrait of a remarkable woman in difficult times

A rich, affecting novel

A witch's brew of eerie power and startling novelty

A marvellous elucidation of life ... a story full of craft and full of mystery

Compulsory reading for anyone who has a pig, an aunt - or a sense of humour!

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

The greatest comic writer ever

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

Sublime comic genius

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour