Funny, bizarre, often moving and always brave

I yearned for a bad influence and boy, was Tennessee one in the best sense of the word: joyous, alarming, sexually confusing and dangerously funny

Williams's ear for dialogue, eye for character, and exploration of love, longing and loneliness are as powerful in these stories as they are in his plays.

There used to be two streetcars in New Orleans. One was named Desire and the other was called Cemeteries. To get where you were going, you changed from the first to the second. In these stories, Tennessee validated with his genius our common ticket of transfer

As in the plays, it is the force and adroitness of his curiosity that impresses.

Although Murakami's style and deadpan humour are wonderfully distinctive, his emotional territory is more familiar - remorse, unresolved confusion, sudden epiphanies - though heightened by the surreal... For all its peculiarity, Planet Murakami offers a recognisable landscape of our fears

Disarming, amusing and reveals his lightness of touch

A beguiling collection that shows off Murakami's bold inventiveness and deep compassion

Murakami is excellent at creating an intense mood in a swift few lines... always provocative and never less than engaging

By turns disturbing and delightful, funny strange and funny ha-ha...Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is a handsome volume of prose, every bit as substantial as a novel...They show him at his very best; not as a cult novelist but as a really first-rate writer of short fiction

Funny but also sad and wise

Murakami’s fictional world is extraordinary.

Julian Barnes reminds us what an exhilarating experience it can be to read a really good critic.

A compulsive page-turner.

Barnes’s passion for his writers is infectious.

Blissfully intelligent.

The temptation to turn away is powerful, but the rewards for resisting it are considerable. These essays combine a scholarly breadth of knowledge with a powerful sense of the absurdities of the creative life.

Through the Window is a wonderful and very interesting collection of essays that rewards close, and also measured, reading.

A masterclass display of versatility... mood and style in these richly concise, crisply written pieces are confidently varied, too... adding vitality to the virtuosity is a terrific ear for idiomatic speech

A writer who reveals the power of the short story to speak for our time

O’Connor is a gifted storyteller… [He] has a wonderful ear for dialogue and is a master of the telling phrase

This collection is beautiful; full of pure, simple truths that linger long in the mind