The voice of Small Memories is so immediate, genial and full of simple affection for the boy he was, that reading it feels very much like sharing a fireside with a talkative uncle

A moving account of his childhood and adolescence...Small Memories will delight

A real insight into the making of a great writer

It's impossible not to be charmed by this fluid, spontaneous-seeming memoir of boyhood from the late Portuguese Nobel Laureate, Jose Saramago [...] For all its delightful novelty, however, the childhood described here is also beguilingly universal: the superstitions and terrors, the mysteries and joys

A powerful and nostalgic memoir

The great thing about this memoir of boyhood is how unportentous it is for the most part

The lasting impression left by the self-portrait is of an abiding loneliness, nostalgia, and loss, leavened by humour and an unfeigned humility

The humiliations and joys of childhood, magnified by time, are delicately revisited

The elliptical prose style that earned Saramago the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998 imbues these snapshots with a sense of time irrecoverably lost as the author, who died earlier this year, reprises the significant episodes of his youth. Any lack of drama will be of little consequence to admirers of Saramago, whose mostly rural vignettes reflect the emotional pitch of an illustrious literary career

This honest account is a real eye opener

Heart-warming memoir which will strike a chord with women everywhere from the first page. If your love life is jaded and you want to turn things around, this will inspire you

A bedroom confessional for the thinking girl, written with novelistic flair and offering that unbeatable diary-peeking thrill. Every woman will find herself here.

[A] beautifully written memoir

A gifted storyteller with a mastery of Western literature, Nafisi knows how to use language both to settle scores and to seduce. Her family secrets pour forth in a flood of revelations of anger, humiliation and deceit

An utterly memorable book

All readers should read it

Enthralled

This is a remarkable insight into a fascinating period of history, and a touching portrait of astonishing tenacity and integrity in the face of adversity that few in the Western world could imagine

A balanced, lucid narrative; a rich, complex account of this crucial part of Iranian history

A powerful memoir of Nafisi's Iranian childhood, her mother and a homeland shattered by political revolution