Startlingly, incandescently alive

Unlike those of us who come howling into the world, blind and bare, Mr Roth appears with nails, hair, teeth, speaking coherently. He is skilled, witty, energetic and performs like a virtuoso

A great novella - amazingly, this was Roth's first book - about love, sex and growing up

Opening the first page of any Philip Roth is like hearing the ignition on a boiler roar into life. Passion is what we're going to get, and plenty of it

Few people truly understand the deep tensions, traumas and banality of violence that can be found in small town life quite like Colin Barrett. Crime and the characters who commit it is his forte, but his writing is never less than masterful, and he sits squarely in the centre of a golden generation of new Irish writers

Colin Barrett proved with his short stories that he's not only one of the most stylistically gifted writers working now, but also one of the most generous. His first novel, Wild Houses, is deft, intricate, unique - restorative in its refusal to be anything but itself. Colin Barrett is a talent of the rarest kind

A brilliant novel... Wild Houses is swift, tender and honest. It's been a long time since I've been so worried, so heartbroken, so moved by a set of funny misfits. Barrett is one of our keenest observers of the miraculous amid the everyday and of the uncommon beauty of common things, the power of attention. When I finished this novel, I desperately wanted to call Dev, Doll, or Nicky, just to see if they were okay, to see if everything had turned out alright.

Vivid and wild, funny and chilling - Wild Houses is the business

Wild Houses has a rare momentum that comes from the rhythms of the sentences, the vivid descriptions and the brilliantly chosen details. The momentum emerges also from the depth and complexity of the main characters and the wide sweep of the narrative. In a small town in the west of Ireland over a few days, a whole world, memorable and edgy, is captured for the reader

Wild Houses is a taut, brooding thunderstorm of a novel

By turns raucously funny, tense and deeply affecting, it has been well worth the wait

Thrilling ... Bhattacharya writes beautifully about friendship, family and the devastating consequences of secrecy and shame in a narrative that powerfully evokes the complexities of coming of age in modern India

Emotional and bold ... A rare voice that rewards us with hope and recognition

Salman Rushdie's exuberant writing remains a source of pleasure... A vibrant, sweeping tale with a valuable message: that stories outlast tyrants and words can be the true victory.

Victory City is epic in its sweep, exploring the futility of violence, the marginalisation of women and the resilience of great art, and it is written with a winning lightness. It is a vital and revivifying addition to Rushdie's body of work and it would be no surprise to see it in contention for major prizes later this year.

It's splendid that Salman Rushdie has a new novel out... Better still, it's a cracker.

Swiftly paced, unfussily structured, and in fluent and spirited prose, it racks the history of a magical city created by a demi-goddess.

An epic adventure-filled saga, you'll be intoxicated by its magic.

A wonderfully entertaining literary hybrid, an intimate epic, a serious comedy of manners.

A vigorous, enjoyable epic that hymns the enduring might of narrative over more fleeting forces.

This latest addition to his great body of work deserves nothing but celebration and gratitude.

A joyous masterpiece that will remind the world that, aside from being a free speech hero, he is one of the planet's greatest writers.

There is a welcome levity to his prose here as he riffs on myth-making, culture clashes or the nature of storytelling itself.

Victory City has the tone of mischief Rushdie is always able to channel into his bright, fluid storytelling. Amid all the courtly intrigue and fantastic realism woven through the extensive cast of characters, fleeting dashes of wicked humour sit up and pierce the tale delectably. Rushdie's sharp, camouflaged satire speaks to everything, from religious extremism to greed to patriarchal misogyny. It all just seems to unspool from him without effort.

The best thing Salman Rushdie has written in years... One of the richest and most exuberant books he has given us.

Rushdie's creation is vivid, compelling, and entirely his own.

Salman Rushdie is a genius and I wish he could read me a story - or a chapter of his book - every night before bed. The scale and scope of his intellect and his imagination is googolplex.

It does not resemble any other novel I could name. A major accomplishment by one of our greatest living writers.

No one, and I mean no one, can bring an entire world to life... like Salman Rushdie.

Mesmerising and soul-stirring. Victory City is an epic tribute to the power of words as well as the resilience of women. Rushdie is without a peer in proving that literature soars above tyranny and bigotry, and imagination roars louder than censorship

This is Salman Rushdie at his most virtuosic.

It will show you the adult world in a whole new light. Only a master storyteller can do that.

A storyteller who reminds that death may take away a lot of things, but never the power of our words.

A capacious and sweeping telling in which writing about the past is a way of also staring dead on at the present.

Victory City stands out as one of the year's literary highlights... that feels like an instant classic.

Rushdie is an assured storyteller at the height of his powers, revealing once again how important India is as a fount of his imagination.

Victory City is one of Rushdie's very best novels. It is also a luminous, italicised, vibrant reminder of the possibilities of free expression and of the untrammelled imagination. In this instance, the medium is indeed the message.

Victory City can, in many ways, be read as an entertaining jaunt through Indian history, though it is history through the kaleidoscopic and sweeping lens of a fairy tale... this brilliantly magical tale.

This sweeping, intricately crafted fairy tale is underscored by very human characters and Rushdie's signature wit.

A grand entertainment, in a tale with many strands, by an ascended master of modern legends.

Rushdie's magical style unfurls wonders.

Rushdie's Victory City is another fabulous novel set in his native India... He's a master who never forgets that the main goal of a storyteller is to entertain rather than educate or pontificate.

Rushdie is, above all else...one of the most powerful defenders of story we have... Victory City is a victory for Rushdie - and for every reader who enters its gates.

Rushdie succeeds in creating a kind of incantatory prose that befits the fabulist nature of the story... he can enchant readers like few other writers.

This is a man at his full-strength, high-tar best - with his deeply humane worldview, his brilliance at set-pieces and, above all, the thrilling wildness of his imagination on irresistible display.

With its carousel of shifting politics and history, Victory City is Rushdie's most textured and triumphant wonder tale yet.

Utterly enchanting.

Rushdie's return to magic, myth, and India's ancient stories is dazzling. With mercurial prose and vivid renderings, Rushdie never loses us in Victory City's convolutions, but instead builds our trust to travail the many grand events of Pampa's imagined empire.

A rich, dramatic saga... The many moments of comedy...show Salman Rushdie's storytelling skills and his endearing sense of playfulness... the main feeling the reader gets is of a storyteller enjoying himself.

Rushdie is an expert at mixology; he's the DJ Shadow of text with references and allusions to high and low culture from Finnegans Wake to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon... a well-told tale that gets bums on seats.

There's a magical thread of storytelling running through the veins of each character we meet in this book... a joy to read.

A work of great imagination... In Victory City the power of the written word and of the storyteller remain triumphant.

Rushdie’s sheer love of fiction is irrepressible.

A wonderfully entertaining literary hybrid

Victory City is Salman Rushdie at his imaginative best… sweeping the reader on a journey that feels epic in a mere 320 pages