Kazu is the biggest and most profound thing Mishima has done so far in an already distinguished career

His most novelistic work, with a degree of earthiness and warmth rare in his fiction

Japan's foremost man of letters

Direct yet allusive, poetic...an amazing feat

Anna Politkovskaya refused to lie, in her work; her murder is a ghastly act, and an attack on world literature

Her death is a grave crime against the country, against all of us

The dispatches selected for this volume...make for a compelling body of work

Haunting compilation

Shows her strength as a chronicler... Her eye for detail was unfailing

This collection of journalism should remind people of the big, obvious fact that sometimes gets forgotten: Anna Politkovskaya was a fantastic reporter. She knew what a story was, how to get it and how to tell it. Dead or alive, she demands to be read and heard and trusted...

There is some remarkable court reporting. Proceedings to bring one mass murderer to justice are brought brilliantly to life. But it is not all death and destruction. Also included is other journalism, including some delightful pieces on issues ranging from death of passion in Russia to the challenges in brining up a psychologically damaged dog....Politkovskya was murdered...but she has not been silenced and her journalism should continue to speak to us long after the riffraff she confronted are thankfully gone from the scene

'[Alone in Berlin] has something of the horror of Conrad, the madness of Dostoyevsky and the chilling menace of Capote's "In Cold Blood"'.

'Fallada's great novel, beautifully translated by the poet Michael Hofmann, evokes the daily horror of life under the Third Reich, where the venom of Nazism seeped into the very pores of society, poisoning every aspect of existence. It is a story of resistance, sly humour and hope'

'an extraordinary novel'

A marvellous book, almost a masterpiece. The tension he maintains despite a fogegone conclusion is miraculous. This is the truest, most vivid I-was-there novel of the epoch.

The stand-out book this year for me was Alone in Berlin (Penguin Classics £9.99) ... It's a page-turning moral thriller, based on fact, of a ­working-class German ­couple and their small-scale attempts to resist Nazi rule in Berlin. Bleak, chilling, utterly compelling and unforgettable.

Penguin's reissue of Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin, brilliantly translated by Michael Hofmann, makes available one of the great novels of the past century. An almost unbearably intense challenge to its readers.

What makes Alone in Berlin such a cracking read is that it pushes us into the midst of that grim reality and yet allows us to put it down - only at the very end - with a feeling of warm humanity.

Hans Fallada wrote Alone in Berlin between September and November 1946, in postwar East Germany. He told his family that he had written "a great novel". He would die a few months later. .... Fallada was correct: he had written a great book, in circumstances and a space of time which make the achievement almost miraculous. But it's the double miracle of translation which gives us Fallada's novel in English as Alone in Berlin. Michael Hoffman is a fine poet, whose acute ear and eloquent understanding of the transition-points between the two languages make the text as powerful as it is down-to-earth.

Barry Unsworth - winner of the Booker Prize once, shortlisted twice - has a lot to live up to. In Land of Marvels he does so magnificently ... Lofty dreams and smash-and-grab capitalism are deftly woven together in precise and elegant prose.

Engaging and informative, with snappy dialogue and a fabulous, if slightly abrupt, ending.

Brilliant exploration of the tensions on an archaeological dig as the first world war looms.

Land of Marvels offers a fluent plot peopled by sharp, affecting characters and graced with the author's usual erudite wit and understanding humour

[a] cleverly plotted and elegantly written novel...Unsworth has evidently done a great deal of research, but this is woven seamlessly into the fabric of the novel so that the reader is caught up in the excitement of Somerville's discoveries.