Belly-laugh-inducing. Sam Lypsyte funny. Faulty-Towers funny.The silliness is anarchic and profound…a ripping story and a rowdy piece of art

Relentlessly readable

Alice Bhatti's Karachi is so alive with sensations that you can smell the sewers, hear the screeching of tyres, and feel the humidity

Superbly witty

An amusingly anarchic tale of Karachi life

[Abani] creates an antic atmosphere that recalls Pirandello

You are bound to find yourself moved and entertained by an iridescent novel from a writer who has come through Lagos and London to take his place as one of our newest, and most gifted, native sons

[One of] .. the best books to really get your teeth into this winter... Part thriller, part love story, the first print run sold out in one day in the author's native Japan

A whole host of Murakami icons from talking cats to one-way portals all contribute to this rich and often perplexing mix. But ultimately, 1Q84 is a simple love story that ends on a metaphysical cliff-hanger... a delicious paranormal stew

It is natural that his work should enchant younger readers, to whom the problems of being are still fresh, as well as others who never grew out of such puzzlements - that his books should send an outstretched hand of sympathy to anyone who feels that they too have been tossed, without their permission, into a labyrinth

An extraordinary love story. Murakami is renowned for his exceptional imagination and this book does not disappoint; he weaves a myriad of worlds, beliefs and themes together in a moving combination. Compelling and bewildering, there's nonetheless something profoundly human and stark in simplicity at the heart of this love story: the power of true love.

Fans, however, will recognise many elements in this fantastical tale, which at its twisted heart is another boy-meets-girl love story but which encompasses the ominous power of cults, a teasing preoccupation with quotidian mundanity, a sackload of music and literature references and a healthy dose of the downright bizarre.

1Q84 is certainly an engrossing, other-worldly mystery to lose yourself in, with a good deal of humour and a considerable thiller-esque page turning pull... Reading it is an intense and addictive experience, and this is no mean feat at all. However, it is also far more than that- it's a highly ambitious work, which raises more questions than it resolves in its intricate plot. A more optimistic take on George Orwell's 1984, kicking off in April that year just like the latter's dystopia, it is concerned with postmodern issues such as the rewriting of the past and the slippery dividing line between fact and fiction, exploring just how uncertain our grasp of reality can be, especially as the world we were born into morphs into somewhere quite different.... For all its fantasy surface and sexy details, this is a work of considerable and haunting complexity, which is likely to resonate a long time after one has stopped turning its numerous pages.

Contains enough of his weird offbeat allure to satisfy devotees

Portrayed in a fluid language that veers from the vernacular . . . to the surprisingly poetic.