[A] literary and social visionary

These are beautiful stories but they bite

Ben Okri...seems to have the two great gifts that are required to make a man a teller of tales: first, faultless artistic economy, which shows in his razor-sharp prose; second, an ability to place himself, chameleon-like in any milieu of society, from the highest to the lowest... Mr. Okri, in short, knows his business

A brutal, harrowing, desperately sincere piece of writing

Impressive . . . Rutherfurd has indeed embraced all of Russia

Russka succeeds where [other books] of trendy Soviet-watching have failed ... Rutherfurd can take his place among an elite cadre of chroniclers such as Harold Lamb, Maurice Hindus and Henri Troyat

Fast moving ... Rutherfurd believes in adding color and adventure to facts that are exhaustively researched, making history palatable if not delicious

Sprawling ... Rutherfurd's close observation of Russia's religious and ethnic diversity gives this epic a distinctive flavor

Rutherfurd literally personifies history