Greene was a past master of the psychological thriller and this was no exception

A masterpiece - tapped out in the lean, sharp prose that film work taught Greene to perfect

All of the Greene hallmarks are there: pace, ingenuity, a sense of profundities suggested but never insisted upon

Typically full of psychological obsession and tricks of perspective, this short story plays games with the concepts of identity and freedom. Threaded through with paranoiac attempts to be sure of time, life, and death, the story ends with impenetrable paradox; with a tragedy and a travesty, a revenge and a redressal, truth and the ultimate lie

Ciarán McMenamin confirms his exceptional talent with this admirably powerful and authentic novel about the First World War and the struggle for Irish independence. Tremendous.

This gripping novel shifts between [the] race to the south and a slow reveal of what happened between the three men on the Western Front...McMenamin never puts a foot wrong, expertly interweaving the historical and the imagined, right up to his masterly denouement

It's gorgeously written, it's cracking, it runs along with great vivid passages.'

McMenamin writes with verve and honesty

Ambitious and powerful...superbly drawn...a stirring novel broad in location and historical sweep...within a tradition that includes O'Connor, Liam O'Flaherty, Sebastian Barry and Frank McGuinness... Paramount in this tradition is the need to expose the big lies, to help us to see the conflict with fresh eyes - and on all of these counts, McMenamin's ambitious novel scores big

A masterful depiction of the human cost of war...reveals how even in the worst of horrors, and against all the odds, love can survive. McMenamin writes with a passionate intensity.

Set during WW1 and the Irish Civil War, turning on two pivotal stories in Ireland's history -- the foundation of the State, and the Protestant memory of WW1 - the novel follows the story of a brutal IRA man, who now needs the help of his childhood sweetheart, and sister of his dead friend, to cross the border to safety.

Paris Echo is an enjoyable and highly readable novel. Faulks has an easy-going style and he draws you seemingly without effort into the world he creates. He has a knowing humour too…In part the novel is a love letter to Paris, but it is also the latest product of Faulk’s long-standing and fascinating engagement with the devastating events of the 20th century.

This intelligent, moving, often disturbing novel is also really a love letter to Paris – and, indeed, to France

Faulks excels at creating well-rounded characters.

An intriguing guide to the many layers of Parisien life.

Master storytelling... [An] intriguing and moving story that shows how the future is shaped by the past.

Immersive

A lovely novel by a writer who lives and breathes France

Another terrific, intelligent read from Faulks

A gripping book that I devoured in about three days; this dark book reminds us of the history that lurks around every street corner

Gaël Faye makes us smile, despite the seriousness of his words

What is autobiographical, and what imagined? In the end it doesn’t matter, when he Gaël Faye gives life to the lost land of his childhood, with poetry and modesty

Small Country is a stirring and graceful tale of stolen innocence and fragmented identity. Hopeful, raw and deeply human, it is a modern classic in the making.

An excellent novel, a model of restraint and quiet literary sophistication

Cherry, Nico Walker’s outstanding debut, is a hard-hitting, ghoulishly funny novel about drug addiction, war and bank robbery.

Heartbreaking, unadorned, radically absent of pretense, Cherry is the debut novel America needs now, a letter from the frontlines of opioid addiction and, almost subliminally, a war story.

Nico Walker’s Cherry is a wrenching, clear-eyed stare-down into the abyss of war, addiction and crime, a dark tumble into scumbaggery, but it’s also deeply humane and truly funny. That is one of the reasons I love it so much: it makes you laugh and ache at the same time, in the manner of the great Denis Johnson.

One of the most exciting new American novelists.

Heavily indebted to the profane blood, guts, bullets, and opiate-strewn absurdities dreamed up by Thomas McGuane, Larry Brown, and Barry Hannah, Cherry tells a story that feels infinitely more real, and undeniably tougher than the rest.

A bruising dispatch from the frontline of the American opioid crisis… the final quarter [of Cherry] rushes by in a cold sweat.

[An] incendiary debut… Nico Walker writes with real rhythm, exhibiting a poet’s discrimination about adjectival choice and the relative length of clauses. It is a rare and remarkable achievement to turn such suffering into a novel of such finely calibrated beauty.

A gritty, addictive read.

I think everyone should read it – it is so horrific.

A well-received return to form

Astonishingly bold novel… [It] is Amis’s best work in years

Amis’s best work since Money