The narrative is mind-bogglingly crisp, resourceful and sometimes hilarious in its description of the myriad ways in which people drink... This is both a moral and a literary book... Remarkable

This is a novel where the characters seem like friends and family. It's a fine achievement

The funniest sad book you'll read all year

A painfully funny, beautifully written account of a wayward family falling like dominoes to the demon drink

Far above the ordinary. Woodward's characters are wonderfully complex and rich

A transcendentally harmonious and compassionate work

A surprisingly tender book... Amid the terror a classic story about love sneaks through: love lost, love imagined, love morphed into madness

Beautifully written... It puts a human face on the suffering inflicted by the Taliban... Disturbing and mesmerizing, The Swallows of Kabul will stay with you long after you've finished it

Riveting... Spare, taut, and pristinely clear prose... An uncanny knack for making moral tension palpable... Extraordinarily moving

A novel very much in the tradition of Albert Camus, not only in its humanism and concern with the consequences of individual choices but also in its determination to bear witness to the absurdities of daily life... [A] chilling portrait of fundamentalism run amok and its fallout on ordinary people