Inspiring, empowering, and timely, compellingly detailed and impressively researched, but better still, it's an immersive story of a terrifying warren of history through which our guide is the sort of hero we all need right now: relatable and resolute and absolutely right

The Girl with the Red Hair brings Hannie alive and I finished it in almost one gulp! What an amazing, inspiring, true-life hero she was ... An engrossing read.

An affecting meditation on the migrant experience

Caleb Azumah Nelson's writing is touching, heartfelt, and musically rich

Small Worlds is an emotionally astute novel that cements this 29-year-old south London author as one of the UK's best.

SMALL WORLDS is a miracle of observation, of attention and attunement. Caleb Azumah Nelson writes prose that is unmatched in its musicality and sensitivity. A gorgeous, rhapsodic, wise novel

In his beautiful new novel Nelson summons the sounds of Black Youth, love and discovery to the page. A celebration of the heart

Caleb Azumah Nelson's Open Water was a slim masterpiece. His second novel, Small Worlds is a similarly lapidary coming-of-age story set over three years in the life of an extraordinary young man.

A gentle reflection on self-discovery

If you haven't had a chance to read Caleb Azumah Nelson's debut, Open Water, about a gorgeous love affair in modern-day London, then please do; it'll keep you occupied until his new release is out on 11 May, which is about fathers and sons, the power of dance and how one man can create a life he loves

A wonderful, dexterous work. Caleb Azumah Nelson explores modes of blackness in ways that are enriching and invigorating

Caleb Azumah Nelson's writing captures nostalgia-that most essential of sentiments-like no other. I was immersed, transported, and at the same time affirmed in the familiar. Gorgeous

Small Worlds grabs you by the heart and holds tightly, revealing a story as beautiful and as lyrical as the words that adorn the pages.

Both intimate and inviting, Azumah Nelson weaves not just worlds but exquisite universes with his words. SMALL WORLDS is a masterful exploration of love, masculinity, coming of age and community, and Azumah Nelson's dextrous, sublime pen brings it into dazzling life.

A book which is alert and enlivening, at once serious and a pleasure to read

Small Worlds is a Vermeer universe of a novel, of warmth, deep feeling, aching and gorgeousness. To read is to be hugged by a rich brown oak, ever stretching out. It is as charged as it is earthed. It is wonderful.

It's a story about finding both one's identity and one's place in the world.

moving, intimate, and sizzling hot

Steeped in nostalgia, grief and heartbreak, yet somehow still hopeful, this is one of the best books I've read all year.

This story about rebuilding small worlds - places in which to feel beautiful and free - is itself a thing of beauty

Brace yourself for a daring, dizzying fable about corruption.

A strange, daring book.

An addictive read... a curious, unjudging journey into humanity's craters.

Lapvona is an interrogation of faith, greed, and abuse - yet Moshfegh's dark humour cackles right through it.

This unsettling read is unlike anything else.

[Lapvona] is unlike anything she's [Moshfegh] written before... a rollercoaster ride exploring the themes of poverty, religion and greed.

Moshfegh's novel is bitterly comic, compelling reading, ever-pulsing with perversity.

[A] wry, bewitching and slightly dark novel.

Moshfegh is one of the most original and astute young novelists working today.

The superabundantly talented...Moshfegh's sentences are piercing and vixenish... she is always a deep pleasure to read.

Funny... Unforgettable... Batuman is particularly good on sex and sexual politics... The star feature is the narration... garrulous, rambunctious... full of baroque riffs and digressions.

A fresh voice is a rare thing, and Elif Batuman is one such.

Either/Or is extremely funny and delightfully ludic, as it probes the very act of reading from the point of view of confused university student Selin.

I was desperately looking forward to Elif Batuman's Either/Or, and it more than lived up to it.

Re-encountering Selin...felt like being reunited with an old friend.

Hilarious.

I greatly enjoyed the comic zing of Elif Batuman's delightful Either/Or

Witty, intelligent and funny... [Selin's] inner monologue is addictive enough to read a thousand more pages of, and I can only cross my fingers that this isn't the last instalment of the series.

Just as funny and self-aware and clever as The Idiot.

Funny, wry and insightful

Laugh out loud…hilarious and thoughtful