Astonishingly and tremendously entertaining

A rollicking, perplexing, astounding whopper of a picaresque novel

Funny, poignant ... it is Bellow's fat comic masterpiece

The great novel of the young person

This portrait of an ordinary man (and one clearly past his best) is by turns hilarious and heartfelt.

Savage is likeable and bumbling and Doyle’s voice is spot on for [this] persona.

Ondaatje’s first novel in seven years mesmerizes from start to finish.

I spend the months before the publication of a new Michael Ondaatje novel trying to keep my expectations in check, telling myself it's simply unfair to expect as much of any writer as I expect from Ondaatje. Then he pulls off a Warlight, and I'm embarrassed by my own lack of faith... [Warlight] is surprising, delightful, heartbreaking and written as only Ondaatje could write it.

Compulsively and grippingly readable. In fact I read it first at a gallop, enthralled by the image of a city and a world distorted and all but destroyed by war, and then again slowly, determined to savour the details and extract as much as I could from it. Much remained puzzling on this second reading, but two things are clear: Michael Ondaatje is a marvellous writer, and Warlight is a novel which will continue to play in the reader’s imagination.

Ondaatje [is] such a thrilling writer… I loved [Warlight].

[Warlight is] so cunningly assembled… leaner than The English Patient and its focus is tighter, a searchlight’s focus.

Absorbing... this is a welcome return from a literary master who knows how to take human experience and cast it elegantly onto the page.

[A] gripping read from a grandmaster.

The crepuscular, dreamlike, post-1945 London that Michael Ondaatje invents in his novel Warlight continues to haunt you long after the plot itself.

A dark adult fairy tale where nothing is as it seems… Ondaatje’s magical mystery tour makes for an exceptionally entertaining literary journey.

Place your bets - with this glorious new book... Ondaatje could be in line for another Booker.

Haunting… [Ondaatje] casts a magical spell, as he takes you into his half-lit world of war and love, death and loss, and the dark waterways of the past.

Warlight is a subtly thrilling story… because of the powerful atmosphere Ondaatje invokes of unease, disquiet and the unknown. It’s a masterful book.

Ondaatje’s spare and evocative prose perfectly captures the crumbled austerity of post-war London… this is easily his most satisfying and seductive novel in years.

[There is a] fragile, haunting, almost whispered quality [to] Ondaatje’s writing… So finely constructed are his sentences that you find yourself holding your breath lest you inadvertently disturb their symmetry.

Ondaatje’s prose is consistently illuminating… It does not stroke the chin of its own wisdom, but allows meaning and poignancy to accumulate through inference and feint. In simple terms, it is an alluring narrative of character and incident told by a powerful storyteller.

Skilfully navigating espionage, betrayal and deception, Warlight... takes [Ondaatje] deep into John le Carré territory… a lyrical but sinister mosaic of a hidden world.

Dazzling.

Warlight is Ondaatje’s most haunting novel after The English Patient… mesmerising.

A beautifully crafted work of fiction… [with a] stunning denouement.

This elegiac novel combines the stealth of an espionage thriller with the irresolute shifts of a memory play, purposefully full of fragments, loss and unfinished stories. Wonderful.

Lyrical but oblique, [Ondaatje’s] prose matches a mood of mystery and suspicion that tantalises.

[A] novel of shadowy brilliance.

The English Patient author Michael Ondaatje weaves another tale of love, loss and memory against a backdrop of World War II... The mysteries come together through a complex, non-linear narrative that revisits and revises each development with careful scrutiny.

Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight stood out this year for its skill in making even the most familiar fictional terrain seem strange and unsettling… every time we think we’ve pinned down what Ondaatje is doing in this novel, he somehow manages to wriggle free. It’s a quite brilliant act of fictional escapology.

It's suspenseful, intense, and Ondaatje's prose is beautiful.

Ondaatje brings to life this work…with meticulous detail

Ondaatje is a skillfully deliberate writer

Warlight not only shines a light into the shadowy wars…but also the uncertain age of adolescene

This seam of subterfuge and the truth being gradually released from the shadows make Warlight gripping reading… Ondaatje adorns the walls with his characters like a master gallerist

Warlight is a layered, precisely written, erudite meditation on the damage we do when we make war. It’s eerily prescient.

Hypnotic.

An exquisite, elegiac account of a life forged in the shadow of other people's secrets, told in language as feathery and delicate as a moth.

I look above all else in fiction for sureness of touch with sentences – and that was abundantly in evidence…in Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight… [Warlight has] the unmistakable stamp of [the author] knowing exactly what [he’s] doing.

Ostensibly realistic, it is phantasmagoric… Everything he says bristles with improbable life. Reading it is like watching a movie in which, however much activity there is, the atmosphere dominates the plot

A meditative and dreamily lyrical espionage thriller

Ondaatje brings Warlight’s seemingly disparate fragments together with such skill that the ending feels not just satisfying but inevitable. The most lovely conjuring trick, it leaves you in awe of the magician. I emerged blinking into the glare of the 21st century, bereft in a way a novel hasn’t left me bereft for a longtime

Ondaatje’s onion of a novel, his first since 2011’s The Cat’s Table, combines rich intrigue with a meditation on how we rewrite our memories by examining them… a stunning return.

Magnificent.

Nothing in the world of this novel is ever redundant; nothing is accidental. Whenever you come across a striking detail…you can be sure it will crop up again, be charged with more significance, be joined with the rest of the story in a long chain of meaning.

Mesmerising.

Ondaatje’s first novel in seven years is also one of his best – a quiet but profoundly powerful book… A superior, espionage novel about the unstable, shape-shifting nature of personal history.

The evocation of night journeys through the fog-bound city and along mysterious canals and forgotten rivers is spellbinding.

Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight is one of the best books I’ve read in years. I’d pick it up again in a heartbeat.

Ondaatje’s prose is beautiful, and he successfully builds suspense and tension without seeming too heavy-handed

Michael Ondaatje is at his best when writing about awkward, quiet types

Brilliant dramatic tale

Ondaatje’s prose is consistently illuminating. Warlight is a meditation on the purpose and possibilities of storytelling

[T]his elegiac novel combines the stealth of an espionage thriller with the irresolute shift of a memory play, purposefully full of fragments, loss and unfinished stories. Wonderful

Warlight is a subtly thrilling story… It's a masterful book

- So finely are his sentences constructed that you find yourself holding your breath lest you inadvertently disturb their symmetry

[C]ompulsively and grippingly readable… Ondaatje is a marvelous writer, and Warlight is a novel which will continue to play in the reader’s imagination

For the lyrical strength of the prose alone, a new Michael Ondaatje novel is always a treat

Warlight is a layered, precisely written, erudite meditation on the damage we do when we make war

Rachel Kushner's The Mars Room was a hot favourite on this year's Booker shortlist, and it's easy to see why… Kushner's atmospheric writing is compelling to the last.

Kushner’s writing is the most marvellous I read this year… time and again I found myself rereading paragraphs of The Mars Room for her perfectly turned sentences, the music of her prose