His deepest and best book

When I think of Bruce Chatwin now, I think of the ultimate storyteller. It’s the resonance of the voice and the depth of his vision that makes him one of the truly great writers of our time

Nearly every writer of my generation in England has wanted, at some point, to be Bruce Chatwin; wanted, like him, to talk of Fez and Firdausi, Nigeria and Nuristan, with equal authority; wanted to be talked about, as he is, with raucous envy; wanted above all to have written his books…(he was) a writer no one who cares for literature can afford not to read.

The finest novel to appear in French since Beckett's trilogy

Very funny and very sad... A treasure-chest of stories, something to be enjoyed by anyone who has ever responded to works on the same scale and in the same spirit as Rabelais and Chaucer and Sterne

Hers...is the rarest of all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts...by speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar

Commonly thought of as 'romantic', but try rereading it without being astonished by the comfortableness with which Brontë's characters subject one another to extremes of physical and psychological violence

Lambasted when it came out as irredeemably perverse and, I quote, as practically "French"'

The greatest love story ever told, Heathcliff the hero being a wild, stormy, gothic fellow who will not rest until his beloved Cathy is in his arms again, even though she died some years previously. My favourite moment comes when he bribes the sexton who buried Cathy to bury him next to her, with the sides of their coffins left open, so when they're dug up 50 years hence nobody will know which bones are his, and which are hers

This beautifully designed box-set of four acclaimed novels by the Bronte sisters had me engrossed in Wuthering Heights for the first tie since my school days .... Marvellous

A good story, flourishing characters, and the most persuasive narrative voice

A classic tale of the triumph of youthful naivety over middle-aged cynicism

Classic coming of age novel