This is a remarkable novel, elegant, wise, and beautifully constructed. I loved the book, and admired the work and spark that went into it.

Impressive ... Moore crafts a clever cycle of interconnected short stories about players in New York City's music industry.

The kind of book you want to read twice. The first time you read it for the well-told story, the second time for another look at the inventive way [Moore] tells it.

Imagine having happened upon Dylan singing in Harvard Square, or having caught one of Joni Mitchell's early shows at an empty club. This is how I felt reading Liz Moore's lyrical and powerful debut novel, like I was witnessing a timeless artist on the verge of transcendence. The Words of Every Song is a virtuoso performance. These beautifully rendered characters are melodies that echo in your head, chords that reverberate in your heart, and, long after you've turned the last page, you can still hear the audience calling for an encore.

Sweet, wistful, artfully arranged: like the best mix tape anyone ever made for you.

A thoroughly enjoyable novel, quietly accomplished.

Novels this good are rare.

Sahota's prose is a finely modulated instrument that moves from subtle minutiae to cosmic magnitude... Exhibiting the narrative control and psychological acuity of Rohinton Mistry and Jhumpa Lahiri, Sahota's tale of trans-generational trauma is quietly devastating.

Sahota's beautifully crafted novel dovetails two stories from different eras... Both characters are prisoners of circumstances but, in their hunger for redemption, become emblematic of the human condition.

Such a thrilling combination of beauty and heartbreak. It's breathtaking.

Sahota gives his period narrative the same effortless immediacy as his present-day one, yet his novel works by stealth, quietly beguiling the reader into an almost painful intimacy... I loved it.

There is a scrupulous subtlety about that way that Sahota refuses to let his historical characters act as though they are in a historical novel.

An intense drama of classic themes - love, family, survival, and betrayal - told with passion and precision in Sahota's economical, lyrical prose.

A gripping read... a memorable and poignant depiction of how family histories can echo through the generations.

Outstanding... dense with intricate layers. As author, Sahota brilliantly plays with access to knowledge, to history. China Room promises to haunt and to illuminate.

China Room is very good at examining the trauma held in one family, whether it be personal or housed in a home, village, or country. Sahota seems to acknowledge that although we are not doomed to repeat the past, each subsequent generation feels a measure of the hardship that the last generation faced... a well-developed story of two lives that touch one another in ways that that can never be clearly seen.

Engrossing, intricate, excellent.

Sunjeev Sahota's The Year of the Runaways propelled him on to the 2015 Booker shortlist. His latest, China Room, a multi-generational masterpiece ... could well see him nominated again.

Political currents seep subtly in and the cumulative effect is potent

Exquisitely written

Sunjeev Sahota balances weighty ideas about cultural prisons and self-determination with hushed, featherweight prose

[A] hauntingly beautiful novel

Sahota's third novel has prose so beautiful it stops you dead

Sunjeev Sahota's The Year of the Runaways propelled him on to the 2015 Booker shortlist. His latest, China Room, a multi-generational masterpiece...could well see him nominated again