It is, quite simply, a magnificent and unforgettable work

A superbly realised novel whose truth cuts to the bone

A fierce pageant of modern South Africa ... A remarkable work by a brilliant writer

Coetzee is one of the greatest writers of our time ... Age of Iron is taut, ironic, grieving and, finally, astonishing

The final instalment of Montefiore's loosely connected Moscow Trilogy: amidst the killing and the chaos, a group of prisoners are offered a chance of redemption on a secret mission behind enemy lines on horseback. Montefiore has a keen sense of place and an eye of unexpected details. Switching between the frontline on the Russian steppes and Stalin in the Kremlin, this is an EXCITING FAST-PACED ADVENTURE AND A LAMENT FOR LOVE IN DARK AND BRUTAL TIMES.

I devoured Red Sky at Noon. A heartstopping, heartbreaking, technicolour epic. A grand homage to the Russian masters Babel & Grossman, echoes of Hemingway & Dostoevsky, and a propulsive delight that is entirely Montefiore's own. Gripping storytelling allied with intimate, unsqueamish knowledge of Russian history - a special combination.

This gripping instalment of the Moscow Trilogy tells of a man wrongly imprisoned in the Gulags and his fight for redemption. Meticulously researched ... In this searing tale of love and war, most moving is the redemptive relationship between a soldier and a nurse that blooms amid the brutality. An homage to the author's favourite Russian writers and the Western masterpieces of Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy and Elmore Leonard, such influences pervade this atmospheric tale told in the author's distinct own voice.

A GRIPPING tale ... Montefiore is BRILLIANT at depicting the BROODING MENACE ... the [penal battalions] are given increasingly risky missions, it is Benya's journey on horseback that we follow behind enemy lines in the grasslands of southern Russia ... An EPIC tale ... The language is arresting ... It's beautifully done: a WESTERN ON THE EASTERN FRONT.

DISPATCHES FROM THE DAYS OF BLOOD AND THUNDER ... There are atrocities on all sides and a smidgen of love as Benya falls for a brave Italian nurse. A subplot follows the ill-starred affair between Stalin's daughter and a Jewish writer. But Benya's struggle to keep his humanity is the memorable spine of the book.

Exhilarated and terrified ... Golden is plunged into a world where violent death could arrive at any moment and any pleasures that present themselves (an unexpected affair with an Italian nurse, for example) must be seized immediately. Sebag Montefiore PAINTS HIS VERBAL PICTURES of the WAR IN BOLD PRIMARY COLOURS ... SHEER ENERGY OF STORYTELLING AND GRAND SWEEP OF NARRATIVE.

IT'S LONESOME DOVE MEETS STALINGRAD. A band of outlaws riding & fighting for their lives on sweeping plains - but these bandits are not battling tribes in the Wild West, they are on the grasslands of south Russia at war with Nazi Germany and its ally, the Italians. Our hero is not a Texas Ranger but a Jewish writer named Benya Golden. Montefiore has brought his understand of Russian history to life here with great gusto traversing Gulags, battlefields and Kremlin but Golden is a lover not a fighter...

Tolstoyan

Simon Sebag Montefiore’s skill with imagery is such that he immerses his reader in an utterly ethereal landscape … Montefiore can effortlessly meld beauty and battle

For the sheer pleasure of being swept away in an epic tale of love and war by a master storyteller, Red Sky At Noon by Simon Sebag Montefiore had me enthralled from beginning to end. This is the final part of his Moscow trilogy – a series of compelling historical novels in the great tradition of Scott, Thackeray and Tolstoy.

A novel of ideas and a gripping thriller… Harris is a marvellously compelling story-teller

With moral subtlety as well as storytelling skill, Harris makes us regret the better past that never happened — while mournfully accepting the bitter one that did

A fantastically entertaining historical novel that you won’t want to put down until you finish . . . For me, this is a better novel than Fatherland, which posited the ‘what if Hitler was still Fuhrer in 1964?’ scenario. It is altogether more grounded and serious, but equally enjoyable

Exerts a powerful grip

It’s hard to imagine how history can be told better

Lovely details. Clever Twists. Superb.

This novel is gripping from start to finish

In recent years there have been a number of very good novels by veterans of the Global War on Terror. None is as ambitious, inclusive or powerful as Brian Van Reet's Spoils; none has this novel's range or uncanny ability to transport the reader to the battlefield and those rarely explored margins at the battlefield's ragged edge. Spoils is a fantastic debut.

Vivid and fierce, Spoils is an eloquent exploration of humanity. Depicting a world with no obvious villains or heroes, this novel is as important as it is timely. By exploring the nuances of motivation, loyalty, and sacrifice, Van Reet exposes the connections that bind us across even the greatest divides.

The brilliance of Brian Van Reet’s Spoils lies not only in the sheer forward-motion velocity of its plotting, but in the psychological terrain it explores: what a generation of young women and men went looking for in Iraq, what they found, and why that discovery matters so profoundly for the rest of us.

In Spoils, Van Reet has imbued his subject with subtlety — something that it is so often stripped of, both by combatants and the media. One rarely sees a war novel by a soldier with such convincing writing on both sides of the trenches.

This is a great novel… Brian Van Reet [is] a special talent.

An honest glimpse into the action, emotion and futility of war.

The action is realistic and relentless, the writing lean and muscular, the tale harrowing, and the horrors seemingly inevitable but no less powerful for that.

In dazzling and propulsive prose, Brian Van Reet explores the lives on both sides of the battle lines… Depicting a war spinning rapidly out of control, destined to become a modern classic, Spoils is an unsparing and morally complex novel that chronicles the achingly human cost of combat.

Spoils reeks of the fog and futility of war… It has its own blue-collar beauty as it tells its tale from three perspectives: a gay, female US soldier, an Egyptian jihadist and a US tank commander.

Brian Van Reet has firsthand combat experience to draw upon for this powerful piece of fiction, rendering it an intensely humane story, giving credible authenticity to the plot, and scenes presented to the reader… Enlightening, thought provoking and hauntingly mesmerising, I cannot recommend Spoils highly enough to anyone interested in novels about war and conflict.

Every page brims with brutal authenticity.

Spoils bears eye-widening witness to valour, horror, violence, cruelty and absurdity.