'Like Jonathan Swift, Pratchett uses his other world to hold up a distorting mirror to our own, and like Swift he is a satirist of enormous talent ... incredibly funny ... compulsively readable.'

'A true original among contemporary writers - a fantasist who loves naff humour and silly names, and yet whose absurd world is, at heart, a serious portrait of the jingoistic fears that keep us at each other's throats.'

'The great Terry Pratchett, whose wit is metaphysical, who creates an energetic and lively secondary world, who has a multifarious genius for strong parody as opposed to derivative manipulation of past motifs, who deals with death with startling originality. Who writes amazing sentences.'

Scholarly but speedy narrative, steeped in medieval horrors ranging from flogging to famine, all anchored in what feels like a passion for history and spelling out the way things were

A wistful daydream about innocence and happiness

The high mid-summer pomps of tree and flower are evoked with gusto

I really enjoyed Pay It Forward and its powerful message. I very much admire the work and philosophy of Catherine Ryan Hyde and I thank her for what she is doing and for what she is writing. It's a powerful reminder of the difference one person can make.

Karoo is a very good and very funny novel of the old-fashioned American kind, the tragi-comic story - familiar from Philip Roth and JP Donleavy - of a selfish but vulnerable and oddly lovable monster whose own shortcomings don't disqualify him from saying some sharp things about the hypocrisies of the allegedly better-balanced types who despise him

Adulterous alcoholic and pathological liar, it is, nevertheless, hard not to love Karoo, whose sardonic observations are both poignant and extremely funny. This is comic writing at its best. Clever, well crafted and proof that Tesich was master of the medium

Brilliantly funny in its early chapters, but also very wise, the virtuosic irony turns to bitterness as a tragic story develops. Tesich died just after completing this marvellous, heart-felt valediction.

A sad novel with a jaunty, upbeat tone that disguises the tragedy of Tesich's magnetic characters

A feisty read you won't want to put down

A must-read for empty nesters ... this is Trollope at her most poignant