Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar is undoubtedly the most remarkable author in modern Turkish literature. With The Time Regulation Institute, this great writer has created an allegorical masterpiece, which makes Turkey's attempts to westernize and its delayed modernity understandable in all its human ramifications

Ugly Bus is a blend of darkness and humour … Just when you think it has no more twists and turns to offer, the novel's final scene is startlingly revelatory about who and what a particular person is … there are characters here whose story could well be continued in a third novel … Bring it on, I say, provided it has the tension, momentum, observational keenness and dry wit of this one.

I think what struck me more than anything else was how believable everything was and Thomas' brilliance in setting scenes, creating characters who I felt I could genuinely see and relentless black humour, darkness and pure grit. It's sweary, it's dirty and it's real.

Brilliant

A gripping read... This is a book that will get you thinking – and thanking your lucky stars for a good night's sleep... I loved it

Calhoun’s prose is razor sharp, concise yet hauntingly descriptive... I wouldn’t be surprised if Black Moon turns out to be the best debut novel of 2014

The novel is a heart-stopping quest

Calhoun vividly depicts the societal collapse that results when people are no longer able to differentiate dreaming from reality... Skilled and polished

One of those perfectly simple concepts which can be summed up in a sentence. Great fun

Black Moon is the kind of book I envy as a writer, and seek out as a reader -- a novel of ideas wrapped in an gripping, expertly constructed story, full of feeling and intelligence. Kenneth Calhoun has his own distinctive voice, a voice I hope (and expect) to be hearing more from in years to come

Calhoun’s epidemic, this new and improved insomnia, sinks us into a world where ‘sleepers’ are the target of violent rage. Here we see the erosion of the everyday ruses that allow us to soldier on, the ugly truths we run from gaining ground. Black Moon is a powerful, beautiful debut.

A gratifying, brooding book

Compelling

Astounding... A work of such sincerity that, to paraphrase Baudelaire, the paper shrivels and flares at the touch of his fiery pen

Free-form, fear-filled, densely descriptive…Norway’s biggest literary star since Ibsen… [Knausgaard] has no obvious superiors among the writers now available to an English-reading public