In Persuasion, Jane Austen picks up the pen to tell us who we are and what we want

Everyone has their Austen, and this is mine. Sparer, more savage - and also more poignant than Pride and Prejudice, this is a novel that tells us wisely and wittily about the nature of romantic entanglements and the follies of being human. It isn't riven with the deep, muscular ironies of, say, Emma, but there is something about the dry lightness of Persuasion that is deceptive. It stays with you long after you've read it

I worship all of Austen's novels, but if I have to choose one over the others, I plump for the autumnal pleasures of Persuasion. This is the last work Austen completed before her death in 1817, and it is rather more tender and melancholy in tone than the novels that preceded it. I read it once or twice a year, whenever I feel in need of a good cry

A subtle and elegiac novel - more heartfelt than some of her earlier romances and with a truly appealing heroine

Female self-worth could have been invented by Jane Austen. No wonder we still value her

It is a sort of a private novel. In the heroine, Anne Elliot, we have glimpses of Austen and what happened to her; the lost romance and the lost youth

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

'Ali's observations of Nazneen, her family and friends, is precise, true and can only emanate out of deep empathy, the quality that gives this first novel its warmth and humour...Ali writes with such confidence and with the kind of control a much more experienced novelist would envy'

'Written with effortless style and amazing aplomb for a first-timer. Believe the hype. Monica Ali really is the Next Big Thing. If you buy only one book this year, make it this one'

'Splendid...Daring...Brilliant...Refreshing...A great achievement of the subtlest storytelling'

'The author's powers of observation are magnificent, placing Ali among Britain's greatest writers, never mind young or old'

'Ali aims for the grandest themes of literature: of love, of individuality, of finding and risking the space to grow, of self-sufficiency, of negotiating co-existence...the biggest surprise about Brick Lane is that it works'

'The joy of this book is its marriage of a wonderful writer with a fresh, rich and hidden world. Her achievement is huge. This is a book written with love and compassion'