Compelling and disturbing

A terrific novel, maintained at fever heat

Stunning... A brilliant meditation upon the post 9/11 world

Flanagan's a novelist and philosopher for our time

It grips from the very first page and forces you to read on to its explosive, tragic climax

A damn good story delivered with the glittering prose that only the rage of just moral anger can achieve. Flanagan's Australia is...a global expression of the unknown terrorist in us all

Genuinely thrilling. The Unknown Terrorist reads like the book of the film it will surely become

A thriller of genuine importance...fired by passionate concern

Nothing short of brilliance. Read this novel now, before it's too late for any of us to understand its message

The Unknown Terrorist is accessible and timely as they come - an intense and thoughtful thriller set in paranoid Sydney ablaze with terrorism fever

Flanagan's theme and style is epic and sweeping... I relished descriptions of a society where cruelty and fear lurk beneath a paper-thin moral veneer

A mighty book

A fast-paced, sexually charged whodunit that suggests a far more complex reality... Flanagan's writing is a brilliant reflection of a world full of steamy sex, drugs and violence, with a touch of high-status voyeurism... The Unknown Terrorist mocks the thriller genre even as it fulfils its expectations

Well observed... Never less than a ballsy, enjoyable read... Like Showgirls written by Don DeLillo instead of Joe Eszterhas

A little corker

Brimming with colourful characters, written with tremendous verve and bursting with information... it exuberantly resurrects an age of transition and enthrallingly depicts the pleasures and pressures of creativity.

A vast, sprawling epic, packed with digression and detail, it is a brilliant achievement for a first-time novelist.

The work of a genius

Engrossing detail… Exuberantly broadens out from indictment to celebration… Teems with vividly idiosyncratic characters…. Burstingly informative and thronged with colorful characters, this panoramic novel about the shady start and sunny breakthrough of a literary phenomenon is a phenomenon itself.

Exquisite . . . Martin Stewart's descriptions of Wull's world gripped in winter are brutal and beautiful, his monsters are terrifyingly plausible

Absorbing… Serious without being solemn, sweet without being sickly, it’s an elegant tale about the unexpected places where kindness and sympathy can flourish and deepen.

Kennedy’s comedy is ruthlessly observed – an anti-romance that warms into something moving and profound. It’s also a brilliant portrait of city living.

Two lonely people go about their day in London in this typically Kennedian and utterly wonderful novel… but they find their way towards each other in an agonising love story that’s all about morality and decency in a careless world… Kennedy is a stand-up comedian, and observational comedy runs through this novel in interior monologues that are heartbreakingly familiar and laugh-out-loud sad. Her sentences are some of the best in modern fiction (there’s a springer spaniel called Hector with “black, bewildered ears… [that] made him look as if he’d recently heard dreadful news and still hadn’t adjusted.”) and reading her prose is like eating those fizzy sweets that are both sweet and sour make you wince at the back of your mouth – then go back for more… It’s gorgeous.

Consistently raw and powerful… emotionally exhausting… But there’s a lot to be said for a novel which sets so much store by “affection and tenderness”, and in which the emotional peaks and the possibilities of redemption and renewal are marked by the simple holding of hands.

I love, love, love the Rushdie – I think it’s my favourite of his… The fantasy elements are just magical and, of course, it’s gorgeously written.

An apocalyptic battle between reason and unreason, good and evil, light and darkness, with all the bells and whistles of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Not only a beautifully written satire-as-fairytale but the subject matter is bang on trend… That Rushdie should still be writing so potently and still be continuing to push back the frontiers, when he could easily pull up a deck chair and languish on the frontiers he already owns is wonderful, inspirational and profoundly (but only in the best way) terrifying… 10/10, Master.

Ambitious, smart and dark fable that is full of rich and profound notions about human nature.

I like to think how many readers are going to admire the courage of this book, revel in its fierce colours, its boisterousness, humour and tremendous pizzazz, and take delight in its generosity of spirit.