If you believe English fiction is jaded, you must read Adam Thorpe... Tender, precise, tragicomic and unsentimental.

We arent used to the many deep matters Thorpe touches on, not to such a thorough grasp of the complex nature of our rural past, and through it, of all existence itself... Suddenly English lives again

These stories sing like psalms, robust and vibrant - a poet's novel and a celebration that no social historian would dare attempt

A superb and moving meditation on history, fate and the nature of time, Ulverton is at once a traditional fiction and a wholly successful testing of the limits of literary art

Spanning three centuries and encompassing a startling variety of lives, this debut novel from poet Adam Thorpe is nothing less than a bravura performance... With Ulverton, Thorpe has woven his own enticing 'secret web'. This is no mere promising first novel, but a major work, heralding a brillant new voice in British fiction

Beneath the variety of Ulverton's episodes is the current that links them, and that makes this one of the great British fictional works of our time. Each voice gives us a richly accomplished story; as one voice follows another, we are given the waxing and waning of history, of the land, and of the ways in which society regards itself and the world it disposes of

A masterpiece...he has done a thing I would literally have given my right arm to do

Genius

A masterpiece

Magnificent and long unsung debut novel

Blurs fact and fiction with aplomb… Royle’s novel is a sharp portrait of a man going very wrong.

Extremely good.

Dazzling… Royle attended last year’s Man Booker Prize ceremony as editor of one of the shortlisted titles, Alison Moore’s The Lighthouse… I wouldn’t bet against Royle having to dry-clean the tux on his own account next time.

Royle’s coup is to deliver the pithy sting of a good short story many times over the course of a whole novel.

I admired it so much and wanted to go back and see how it was all put together. His book absolutely enchanted me.

This may be a tricksily metafictional novel but Royle hasn’t forgotten his readers.

5 stars, gripping, innovative and fluent.

Nicholas Royle has produced the holy grail: a literary page-turner. Although it’s published in January, I’ll be astonished if it doesn’t make the short list of many a prize at the end of the year.

A strange, unsettling brew that simply entertains at first before revealing darker and more dangerous depths as it progresses; a dark and delicious treat for lovers of literary fiction who like to have their grey cells tickled.

A vertiginous murder mystery with echoes of JG Ballard, David Lodge and Alain Robbe-Grillet

If writing about creative writing is to risk a novel eating itself, we can be thankful that a writer of Royle's skills put himself in charge of the banquet

A brilliant, eerie mix of campus meta-novel, whodunnit, failed-love story and existential contemplation

This just might be the exceptional book which should be judged by its cover

An ingenious tale

Cleverly metafictional, humorously perverse, and impressively original