This is an immensely stimulating book, rich in imagery, sure in dialogue, profound in characterization, dazzling in its descriptive powers and constantly haunting with its Celtic rhythms and its bold, elegant design

This collection of five novellas confirms that in terms of technical resourcefulness and narrative skill he has few equals among the living novelists. The novella which gives the book its title strikes me as being the finest thing Fowles has written

In a manner worthy of Pirandello, John Fowles uses the conventional apparatus of the detective-story to explore the relationship between fact and fiction, reality and illusion, to masterly effect

Arresting...this collection impresses me as deeply as any of the novels which Fowles has published to date

Pick up any of these stories and you won't, as they say, be able to put it down

[Trollope writes] with such elegant precision - revelatory and ambiguous at just the right moments

A cruelly funny book... most astute observation

Subtle and delicate

La Ronde for the new century

A marvel- beautifully written, surprisingly moving, quietly rather brilliant

While Malouf's chief interest is in the human impulses that lie behind the epic deeds, he remains faithful to the beliefs and values of the ancient world

immensely moving, modern novel

A dignified performance ... in writing this novel Malouf is honouring a great work and also making a great work of his own ... his graceful fiction deals in truth and is always beautiful

Beautifully written and very moving, Ransom is a reimagining that respects Homer's original while expanding expertly on its themes.

Malouf captures the moving humanity of Priam's grief

Lyrical reworking of the final scenes of The Iliad

This superb novel goes by in a heartbeat, so smooth and engrossing is David Malouf's prose...It is a touching tale, full of pain, but rendered beautifully by Malouf's humanity

An audacious reworking of Homer's Iliad.

David Malouf...has given Homer's epic fresh life in this haunting mood piece...a graceful, eloquent text dominated by rage and sorrow

This novel explores the timeless motifs of epic, in miniature

You know it ends in death, and so do Malouf's haunted protagonists, but this telling, at once unfussy and wonderfully poetic, breathes warm life into a great epic

Breathtaking skill...an extraordinary emotional charge.

A finely honed, writerly and wise revisiting of one of the most famous episodes in The Iliad, when Priam the King of Troy goes to bring home the body of his dead son Hector. No-one in prose has managed to better Malouf's imaginative recreation of the Homeric world.

a potent new yarn... Beautifully written in simple language freighted with meaning, Ransom explores a king's impulse to act as a mourning father.