Mastery storytelling.

As you would expect, Kent is a dab hand at plotting and at action scenes, and this novel is another accomplished performance from the old man of the sea

The storytelling has an easy mastery; the prose is lean and muscular, without a word wasted. How well Kent knows his stuff! Not just the jargon of the high seas - the pawls and maintops and the quarter-boats and the catheads - but the psychology of naval men in uniform

Quite simply, monumental

A remarkable parable of human survival against the odds

In this wise, humane and beautifully written novel she has written a masterpiece

A searing historical novel. Dunmore vividly evokes the unbelievable cold, privations and violence as people struggle to survive...an extraordinary description of the horrors of the time

An important as well as a thrilling work of art

A moving and powerful novel in which Dunmore employs all her celebrated descriptive and narrative skills...beautiful

A harrowing, urgent narrative of cold, starvation and the battle to survive

It is quite outstanding, full of beauty, pain and truth... We are lucky to have this book

The facts surrounding the discovery of this book are as remarkable as its contents are magnificent... A triumph of indomitability and a masterwork of literary accomplishment

Deftly translated by Sandra Smith, this is possibly the most devastating indictment of French manners and morals since Madame Bovary, as hypnotic as Proust at the biscuit tin, as gruelling as Genet on the prowl. Irène Nemirovsky is, on this evidence, a novelist of the very first order, perceptive to a fault and sly in her emotional restraint

An heroic attempt to write a novel about a nightmare in which the author is entirely embedded

Read this haunting novel, then read [Nemirovsky’s] letters in this edition to feel the full force of the work

While marked by poppy wearing and memorial ceremonies, the First World War is also sustained through family history, handed down from one generation to the next. No book better articulates the impact of this narrative than Stephen Faulks’ Birdsong.

A truly amazing read

I’d never read such descriptive literature, and couldn’t sleep at night for thinking about what I’d just read. His [Faulks] portrayal of terror on the battlefield is so powerful

My all-time favourite book