The shell of the novel is an adventure story, but its kernel is an exploration of the national attitudes and personal qualities that shape people's responses to world affairs.

A parable of modern-day American interventionism, this story literally pitches its protagonists into the fray.

Much more than a mere jungle survival story . . . as page-turning adventure fiction, A MODEL AMERICAN scores highly. As a warning against the perils of continued globalisation, it deserves to be well read.

Oh my god, Legend of a Suicide just bowled me over completely. It is such a tender, heartbreaking, breathtaking, horrifying and insanely compelling read that when I finished it I went straight back to the beginning and round again. I implore anyone with functioning eyes to read this book

So hard to put down that I am thinking of suing David Vann for several hours of lost sleep

This book squeezes more life out of the first hundred pages than most books could manage in a thousand, which is pretty impressive, considering it's a book about death

In his portrayal of a young son's love for his lost father David Vann has created a stunning work of fiction: surprising, beautiful and intensely moving

One of the most gripping debuts I've ever read

Impossible to put down and equally impossible to forget

An American classic ... harrowing but beautifully wrought ... prose as clear and bracing as a mountain stream

One jaw-droppingly powerful, courageous and original fiction debut...As a 10th work of fiction this would be impressive; as a debut, it is remarkable

Hands down the best fictional debut we have read this year

For the imagery alone and for the sentences, the book would be a treasure, but the story it tells - the story of the suicide of the author's father - has an immediacy and sharpness made all the more special by the tone of distance in the narrative and the beauty of the writing

David Vann's Legend of a Suicide is brave, fantastically well written, and completely defies categorisation

From the shores of Vann's Alaska one can see the Russia of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons ... 'A father, after all,' Vann writes, 'is a lot for a thing to be.' A son is also a lot for a thing to be; so is an artist. With Legend of a Suicide David Vann proves himself a fine example of both

...a gripping fantasy thriller that will please all the older Harry Potter fans out there

Jonathan Littell veers between brilliance and bathos...

Grotesque, dismaying, chilling in its focus on the fine detail of barbarism, this epic of evil is also addictively readable

Compelling... utterly engaging... for anyone whose interest in his subjects is great to enough to bear their unflinching portrayal The Kindly Ones is an essential novel

It's an amazing picture of evil, wonderfully written (and very well translated from the original French by Charlotte Mandell), and left me feeling as though I had supped with the damned