His finest book is The Concert, an epic study of the Albanians when living under the thumb of their sole world ally, the Chinese. It is half realism, half Borgesian, and the form and content jointly stun

The Concert is a splendidly deep and serious novel that entirely transcends, as it were, its unremarkable outer garment… Kadare's achievement is to dramatise truthfully throughout. This is a book to read and re-read

It is Shakespearian in its sweep of history with its insertions of poetic and theatrical farce and its description of the contortions Albanians had to perform to survive Marxist doctrine

The Concert is among the richest, most complex and most challenging works of his fictional cycle… Kadare's achievement is to have found once again the set of tricks that create the illusion of real life on the printed page

He has been compared to Gogol, Kafka and Orwell. But Kadare’s is an original voice, universal yet deeply rooted in his own soil

There is a touching candid quality about the characters in My Name Is… each one speaks with a breathtaking honesty, no matter how unsavoury or damaging it might be to hear

This is not a quasi-misery memoir. Instead, each chapter is told from the perspective of someone who crosses paths with the troubled teenager. There are 23 of these before the final, achingly sad missive from Hannah herself, which means a lot of characters to get through. But on the whole Campbell succeeds in allowing Hannah’s family, friends and, later, psychiatrists and magistrates, to tell her story.

I loved this novel. Barrington is flamboyant, complex and in love with his childhood friend Morris. It really makes you think of all the stories, forbidden and forgotten, from the elders who made England their home

[Eco’s] mind is still as fecund as ever, as demonstrated by this collection of essays… Eco may be an intellectual of the highest order, but there’s nothing forbidding about this collection of essays which are readable and thought-provoking

Utterly compelling; at the risk of trotting out a cliché, I couldn't put the book down

A brilliantly observed tale of class and hedonism

Meg Wolitzer’s latest offering promises to be the epic novel of the summer

A wonderful novel, written with warmth and depth of emotion

This is an exhilarating, aerobatic, addictive novel

Meg Wolitzer’s best novel yet

The dreamy, criss-crossing narrative proves Wolitzer one of America’s most ingenious and important writers

An engrossing look at life’s twists and turns

The wit, intelligence and deep feeling of Wolitzer’s writing are extraordinary and The Interestings brings her achievement, already so steadfast and remarkable, to an even higher level.

This is a wonderful book. Intelligent and subtle, it is exquisitely written with enormous warmth and depth of emotion… Wolitzer is an affectionate and clear-sighted observer of human nature

Meg Wolitzer proves brilliant at writing normal, unremarkable lives, investing them with just as much detailed attention and humane humour as the lives of the beautiful, the rich and the famous… [She] also pulls off an impressive balancing act, sometimes inhabiting the moment-to-moment present of her characters, and at others times writing with a droll hindsight

There are certain authors whose new book you look forward to as though you were about to catch up on news from an old friend. And there are authors whose new book you fall on greedily because you know it will be tartly delicious and satisfy a hunger you didn’t know you had till you read them for the first time. For me, Meg Wolitzer has long been in both of those categories… The Interestings is full of Wolitzer’s trademark pleasures. I love her fearlessness in tackling everything … She has a sly wit and verbal brio which can even make clinical depression entertaining