Anita Brookner is a modern Jane Austen

Brookner's novels are seductively deceptive, swirling underneath their elegance and order are huge, if guarded, reservoirs of turbulence.

One of the best things Brookner has done . . . Brookner, skilful and compassionate as ever, reveals her old-fashioned moral code to be both honourable and horrific.

Like Jane Austen, this novelist works on a little square of ivory rather than a broad canvas . . . Like Virginia Woolf, her aim is not to draw characters in the round, but to reveal psychological reality in the deep.

Moving and memorable, full of yearning and melancholy ... reading it is like taking a literary minibreak

A gorgeously melancholic romance . . . a cautionary tale certain to beguile

The surprise bestseller ... read, loved and wept over by men and women of all ages

Like Snow Falling on Cedars and The Reader, here is one of those rare life opportunities to look again at ourselves, and forgive, achieved with striking style, an unflinching eye and through a clever narrative. Brava Jackie Copleton.

An exceptional tale of a family in crisis . . . at once intimate and sweeping, profoundly subtle and yet remarkably affecting, the story reminds the reader that public catastrophe interrupts myriad smaller, but no less devastating, private troubles, magnifying their consequences and obstructing their resolution. This is a mesmerizing, heart-wrenching story of love and regret, but ultimately, and most assuredly, the healing generosity of hope. I couldn't put it down. I read the end on an airplane, and had to hide my tears from the other passengers.

Full of delicate imagery drawing on Japanese nature and culture, this is a rich, romantic story, brimming with restrained emotion – with a twist that will take your breath away. Superb.

This is a truly wonderful novel about the intricacies of parenting, regret, forgiveness and the exquisite pain of love

A gorgeous book

Rich, bejeweled narrative.

A glittering kaleidoscope of stories which creates a dazzling whole.

Rushdie is a generous, good-natured writer who’d rather woo and seduce his readers than reduce the truth to gall and brimstone and make them swallow it.

Fans should be satisfied and newcomers bemused, then enchanted, by the wordsmithery on show.

Two Years, Eight Months And Twenty-Eight Nights blends Arabian myth, history and sci-fi into a whirlwind of a fable.

A mesmerizing modern tale about worlds dangerously colliding, the monsters that are unleashed when reason recedes, and a beautiful testament to the power of love and humanity in chaotic times.

A festive treat… I know it will bring light, warmth and humour along with a playful understanding of the vagaries of human nature.

A joyous, fractured fairytale with a cast of thousands and a darkly glittering heart.

Will no doubt be read for generations to come.

Salman Rushdie described a battle between Islamic jinn for a 21st-century Earth.

An energetic return to form pitting reason against religious zeal

Magic realism squared […] the most madcap fun you’re likely to have in a book this year.

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.