A little masterpiece

Steinbeck is to be judged by the highest standards

Pure gold

There is no more impressive writer on either side of the Atlantic

A novelist who is also a true poet

One of Brazil’s finest authors offers a meditation on betrayal, guilt, survival and the many ways in which personal and collective histories collide.

The narrator is. . . a Nick Carraway-type whose apparent detachment eventually collapses to reveal deep emotion. In this sly and unexpected novel, Laub asks how some thrive in spite of trauma and others fall apart in the face of success.

An erudite page-turner.

It’s wonderful how Emily Hauser brings alive this Bronze Age world . . . this is immersive writing, marvellously descriptive and evocative . . . an elegant, exciting and in some ways moving story.

It is Atalanta, determined to prove herself every bit as good as a man, who turns this into a story which speaks to us . . . Despite the will of the gods, she is very clearly in charge of her own destiny. It is this mixture of feminism and self-determination which makes For the Winner a very modern and relevant novel.

This is the sort of story I dreamed of covering when I was a journalist. The sort of story for which the phrase You couldn’t make it up was invented. The Adversary takes a deep, mesmerising dive into the darkness of a human soul. There were moments when I truly could not believe what I was reading. But unlike other serial killer noirs sitting on my shelves, this horror is real. And so much more chilling for that.

[A] book that fairly struck me over the head was The Adversary… it’s the coexistence of almost unimaginably variant realities within a family that haunts you.

A remarkably thoughtful and unnerving book...mesmerising

Profoundly disturbing...a remarkable and undoubtedly important book - perhaps even a necessary one

A fascinating meditation on Jean-Claude Romand and what his bizarre life might mean... Carrère's inquiry is highly personal, written in lucid prose...the narrative is often mesmerizing, and revealing about the fragility of human relationships

As a writer, Carrère is straight berserk; as a storyteller he is so freakishly talented, so unassuming in grace and power that you only realize the hold he's got on you when you attempt to pull away... You say: True crime and Literature? I don't believe it. I say: Believe it

Justifiably considered the French In Cold Blood

The sense of dread he conveys is authentic – it is a loss of self, of connection to the world...dystopian

It’s fascinating, watching Carrere dig around in Romand’s inner life… By the end you feel this clever, intriguing book is too good for its banal human subject.

Dark, strange, astonishing.

A jaw-dropping tale of murder and deception that goes right to the heart of what it means to be human... The perfect antidote to an excess of sunshine

The perfect antidote to Trump.

This book is a compelling study of the relationship between artist and spectator, and how suffering feeds into art, and he’s made of it a bravura performance… Extraordinary.

A haunting, intense and Man Booker International prize-winning novel from a great writer.

Incredibly fast paced, and the dialogue comes at you like a machine gun… It is powerful in its own right.

Abrasive, unexpected and eventually heartbreaking, it is a masterclass in characterisation and structure, and it beat off some exceptionally strong competition to win the prize… A Horse Walks into a Bar is quite unlike any other Grossman book except in one important respect: it’s another masterpiece.

Excellent.

Pitch-perfect black comedy