An essential work. The Doll is mesmerising, and like Kadare’s family home conceals both darkness and flashes of light in its interior

The poignant observation, bitter irony and misspoken fear running through the narrator’s central relationship with his mother, a woman secretly terrified of being disowned as unworthy the moment her son achieves the fame he so desires, are what dominate this fascinating study of a difficult love.

In a properly ordered world, Ismail Kadare would by now have got the Nobel prize for literature. By any reckoning, he is one of the most important living European writers, a man whose work is as compelling as any novelist to have emerged from the vanished world that was the Communist bloc

Laconic, sinister and drily funny... Miss this fatalistic, deadpan wit, well served in John Hodgson’s nicely crafted translation, and you miss something essential in Kadare.

Albania's greatest living novelist has invariably explored his country’s repressive political legacy in his strange and brilliant novels... [The Doll] can only enrich our understanding and appreciation of Kadare’s writing.

An evocative, captivating story. Every word of this short book is there for a reason. The considered, precise language (translator John Hodgson has done a fine job) leads smoothly through various – no doubt carefully selected – life events with The Doll being the thread which holds it all together... It’s a category-defying feat of literary engineering by a writer who is totally in control.

A master storyteller

[A] coldly brilliant novel

A novelist of dazzling mastery

One of the world's greatest living writers

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

Kadare's fiction evades ideologies, escaping into richer realms of the past, of myth, folklore and dystopian fantasy

A whirlpool of memories, regrets and hopes.

Elusive, unsettling, beautiful, haunting. This is a complex, devastating study of human relations; a portrait of intense love and damage in equal measure.

Beautifully written and hauntingly imagined

You can't get much farther north than the Ontario of Mary Lawson's icy, compelling stories of calamity and redemption. A Town Called Solace keeps you breathless with anxiety, then relief and finally even joy

Close to perfection

Lawson's writing is clear and emotive... In this poignant novel, rightfully recognised by the Booker judges, the steadfastness of children brings solace to lost grown-ups

There's a beauty and simplicity in her [Lawson's] stories set in small-town Canada

Anne Tyler is a big fan of this Canadian author and so am I

A lovely, gentle novel with edge, worthy of Anne Tyler

Lawson's writing is such that it appears effortless but, as all the strands come together to create a rich and satisfying tapestry, her genius for storytelling becomes apparent.

Completely absorbing... A Town Called Solace pleases at every level. It's a captivating tale suffused with wisdom and compassion

[In A Town Called Solace] doubts, difficulties and uncertainties of the human condition are examined carefully in a way that is both heartbreaking and joyful

Subtle and darkly funny, this tender novel unspools the interconnected lives of her beautifully drawn characters, as they grapple with grief and loss, while steadfastly hoping for a change of happiness in the face of life's uncertainties

[Lawson] writes an unpretentious prose that zings with metaphorical vim and humour

Exquisitely poignant

[An] absorbing novel