A wholly individual writer of considerable stature

Her touch is deft, her perceptions keen, her ear for speech phenomenal. Her people are triumphantly alive

Miss Tyler is a writer whose special gift is to convey the richness, strangeness and unpredictability of seemingly everyday lives...She is a wholly individual writer and one of considerable stature

Is this Mao-era China's most hilarious black comedy? Wang Xiaobo's Golden Age sees its protagonist, like its author, sent for 're-education' - and a very funny, farcical sexual awakening... branded "the Chinese Kafka"... full of hilarity. There are wonderful observations about sex under public scrutiny ... I cannot extol Wang's penetrating prose enough

Wang Xiaobo's 1990s knockabout satire is a revelation. His tale of China's Cultural Revolution is no sombre lesson, but an antic and anarchic extravaganza

An ironist, in the vein of Kurt Vonnegut, with a piercing eye for the intrusion of politics into private life… Long after his death, of a heart attack, at the age of forty-four, Wang’s views still circulate among fans like a secret handshake

Golden Age (a title oozing irony) is an ultra-modern blast of thrillingly wrong-footing licentiousness. Determined to smash taboos, it revels in the anti-authoritarian power of lust

One of China's modern masterpieces ... a political satire fuelled by sex, love and humour

Wang Xiaobo is a truly unique writer, and there are very few writers like him. He had a remarkable ability to blend illusion with reality, distorting our understanding and infusing our feelings into the narrative of his language. This blending is so absurd, so real and palpable. Perhaps only a select few are capable of expressing their life experiences, imagination, and sexuality in relation to a vast and omnipresent political environment as Wang Xiaobo did.

What made Wang Xiaobo's writing so successful was his ability to use the most commonplace language to express the most heartfelt emotions in his inner world, and the most unspeakable real. When we encounter this kind of real while reading, we are left speechless; when "real" reaches a certain level, it all feels so unfamiliar and strange to us. It is precisely when this feeling of unfamiliarity emerges that the power of real reveals itself in Wang Xiaobo's words

In this excellent translation by Yan Yan, Golden Age demonstrates that Wang Xiaobo is one of the most original writers in post-Mao China. At once hilarious and charged with serious political discourse, Golden Age is a tour de force. It is as playful as Animal Farm by Orwell and as complex as Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. Anyone who is interested in modern China should read this book

Every page is a surprise. The novel is outrageous, startling, and very, very funny

One of the great writers to have emerged in post-Mao China. Wang Xiaobo excels in writing about love and sex - and coming of age - in an arid and bizarre world. With beautiful simplicity, he fills the reader with aching poignancy, and yet makes them want to laugh out loud

Like a Chinese Kurt Vonnegut. By turns lyrical and satirical, Wang Xiaobo's sexual comedies set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution are as improbable as that genre sounds. His long overdue publication in English comes as a gift. Golden Age is funny and brave and profound

An iconic writer with a cult status who influenced an entire generation of Chinese writers, Wang Xiaobo culls a different personal memory from the days of the Cultural Revolution. A secret sexual affair between two youths sent to the countryside for reeducation opens a window unto love and punishment, ideology and privacy, reason and absurdity. The wistful triumph in Golden Age bespeaks a time when sanity was survival at its minimum. For all its dark humor, irony, and matter-of-fact fornication, the novel carries tremendous heart in what it encourages the individual to feel. A must-read novel

Until reading Wang Xiaobo's Golden Age, I had not seen a work that captures the ironies and contradictions Wang Er endures living in a communist country in a decidedly capitalist world. Just my saying this sounds academic, but the novel is not academic. It's hilarious, loose, surprising and so smart. I am reminded of Heller's Catch 22, but whereas circularity was the enemy for Yossarian, it might well be Wang Er's ally

Startlingly funny, darkly profound, Golden Age is one of the most memorable novels published in Chinese language in the past hundred years, and it will still be read a hundred years from now

A comic take on oppressive regimes . . . wonderful euphemisms, wide-ranging irreverence, abetted by a voice that is variously smart, quirky, or sarcastic . . . entertaining . . . An unusual writer worth discovering for his humor and flair

A novel of lust and loss during China's Cultural Revolution . . . The idea of how to stand up to power underlies Golden Age

Startling and direct . . . Golden Age has long been admired by Chinese readers for its clever take on sexual rebellion, and its innovative voice and narrative style. Using the language of the state to highlight the absurdity of their laws, Xiaobo made a satire that is both amusing and effective. This fable remains relevant decades later and thousands of miles away

Wang Xiaobo was arguably the most influential intellectual of the post-Tiananmen generation, a nonchalant provocateur as well as an unconventional, anti-authoritarian thinker whose writing has stood the test of time

Golden Age, long admired in many circles, may prove a revelation to readers outside China. Wang Xiaobo steeped himself in the literatures of East and West, and the blending of influences - including Proust and Twain - makes for a searingly funny and fearless narration full of brilliant head-long riffs on sex, time, history, and the terrifying absurdities of the Cultural Revolution. Bawdy, earthy, cerebral, outrageous, bleakly hilarious and off-handedly brave, this novel is like nothing else

Admired for his cynicism, irony, humor, readers and critics around the world now widely regard Wang Xiaobo as one of the most important modern Chinese authors ... His [writing is] considered crucial to understanding China's recent past

Chinese author Wang Xiaobo died aged just 44 in 1997, but his masterpiece, Golden Age (Penguin, April), has now been translated into English in full for the first time by Yan Yan. It's a scabrous, bawdy novel set in the years of the Cultural Revolution. It's also very moving.

No solemn, reverent account, this is a book of many erections ... playful, though undercut with cynicism

The ending teeters on the brink of sentimentality but such is her psychological insight, the truth of her writing, that if she says unlikely happy endings are possible, I believe her.

This meticulous, gently humorous novel is concerned with the effects of grief, the stop-start nature of moving on and the role of friendships, however imperfect, in facing catastrophe. [Tyler] remains as gimlet-eyed as ever in portraying ordinary lives that have become unmoored.

This novel's great achievement is to capture the tensions and subtleties of a married life cut short… I read [it] virtually in one sitting, but that's a fairly common experience with Anne Tyler books… I didn't want it to end. Which is also a fairly common Tyler thing.

The Beginner’s Goodbye is a very funny book … every incident is at once recognizably true to life and yet somehow utterly off-kilter.

Brims with wry perceptiveness and rueful humour

Tyler's playful humour imbues this unsentimental portrait of a mismatched marriage

A cleverly observed tale of an imperfect relationship and grief

A bittersweet, utterly beguiling story of love and loss from a brilliant writer

Both compelling and deeply touching, once you start reading you won’t want The Beginner’s Goodbye to end

It begins with one of those sentences that impels you to read on…Tyler’s haunting tale of love and loss is intelligent, unsentimental and often wryly funny

A lovely, stylish way to write a novel about marriage

A beautifully poignant portrait of marriage, loss and grief

Exhibit[s] all the delicious readability that admirers of Tyler expect

Both compelling and deeply touching, once you start reading you won't want The Beginner's Goodbye to end

An emotionally satisfying book with wise and moving moments

A humorous take on Hollywood romcoms

Sexy, funny, thought-provoking and everything I hoped it would be. Her best novel since American Wife.

Romantic Comedy combines humour with poignancy and a lot of heart.

Sittenfeld's novel continues her wider project of exploring the possibility for a kind of redemptive idealism within our flawed world

Sittenfeld has penned another exquisitely written novel

A fizzy love letter to the prototypical romcom

So much of Sittenfeld's work exists in the dissection and comprehension of female desire

Flirting with the tropes of its namesake genre, this playful novel follows Sally, a writer on an "S.N.L."-like show called "Night Owls," who falls in love with one of its guest hosts. Their relationship develops via e-mail in the post-grocery-wiping, pre-vaccine days of covid-19. When Sally decides to visit her beloved in L.A., their time together in his Topanga mansion requires her to navigate incredulity, insecurity, and an offer that she feels is an "affront to my independence." The novel is preoccupied with the instinctual nature of self-sabotage, and with the fulfillment that can come from defying ingrained impulses

Insightful romcom sparkles with real wit and wisdom

Whip smart and really funny

Scores big on giving readers an insight into the machinations of a TV writers-room

Full of dazzling banter and sizzling chemistry

If you ever wanted a backstage pass to Saturday Night Live, this book is for you

Excellent

Both a brilliant portrait of the comedy world and a witty grown-up love story. Lives up to its name