He did us all an honour by electing to use, and transform, our language.

Nabokov can move you to laughter in the way that masters can - to laughter that is near to tears.

There's no funnier monster in modern literature than poor, doomed Humbert Humbert.

Like a hipper and darker 21st century Anne Rice. If you like your history mixed with fiction, and full of sex and magic and violence - and let's face it, that's how we all prefer it - then you're in for a hell of a ride

Mixes dark fantasy and historical fiction with large dollops of American Gods-style mythological bricolage... It's to Headley's credit that she makes this audaciously naff premise not only work, but work well... This is a shamelessly fun pop-historical blockbuster

I love this book: the boys running wild on the long sea voyage, the slow revelation of the adult world they don't fully understand, the loss of the past and the beginning of the future, and even a sort of thriller in there! And the beauty of the sentences. Perfection

Wondrous

Part memoir, complete masterpiece... Written with tenderness, wisdom and sharp emotional recall, this is an exuberant elegy to innocence

Grave and playful at the same time, beautifully written and moving

It's impossible to explain through any discussion of plot and character the hypnotic brilliance of The Cat's Table. The joy of boyhood and the darkness at its edges are conveyed in sense of extraordinary imagination... It is entirely...well, Ondaatje-esque

Vividly follows the passage from Ceylon to England of an 10 year-old boy on a line full of eccentric, mysterious passengers

Ondaatje's prose, flawless as ever, deals with loneliness, friendship and pre-pubescent love