an excellent novel, a model of restraint and quiet literary sophistication

[A] luminous debut novel… This is a book that demanded to be written... With a light touch, Faye dramatises the terrible nostalgia of having lost not only a childhood but also a whole world to war

An evocative portrait of what it means to lose one’s freedom and innocence. Gaël Faye’s literary powers lie in his unbridled honesty and his effortless prose. He is a writer of great promise and grace

Unforgettable… Gaël Faye’s talent is breathtaking; no country that can give the world a writer like him should ever be called small

as beautiful as it is painful... It's easy to see why it set the French literary scene alight. This is one you won't be abandoning in the hotel library when you leave.

a masterpiece in bringing home the first-hand realities of war... It's heart-wrenching and beautiful and distressingly authentic. Everyone should read it.

This beautiful coming-of-age novel conveys a heart-rending desire for peace and harmony. It sets forth a vision of the world that is poetic rather than political, where horror is displaced by wonder.

A magnificent book… a master-stroke of a first novel

Precise and potent...deeply affecting... The juxtaposition of everyday growing pains and the fallout from atrocities is heightened by Faye's lovely prose, which builds a heartrending portrait of the end of childhood

Gaël Faye’s words are a mix of such precision, gentleness and gravitas that finishing this first novel feels like coming out of a heartrending embrace.

A very personal and intimate novel about an African childhood cut through by socio-political turbulence… Gaël Faye has evoked the darkest pages of contemporary Africa without tipping into pathos

A literary revelation, subtle and powerful

Gael Faye is a revelation. Small Country is a luminous and poignant novel about childhood, war, exile and identity… this is literature at its most powerful

Triumphant

Writing that is beautiful, sad and funny. A poetic ‘cry to the world’ about the existence of Gabriel, his family, his friends and everyone else. Before they became “a bunch of exiles, refugees, immigrants and migrants"

a melancholic tale of a paradise lost

In the summer months, there are two categories of books: those we take on holiday and leave behind in the sand, and those that make their mark on us for life. Small Country by Gaël Faye is firmly part of the latter category.

A literary phenomenon

Small Country is a big novel

The dizzying enterprise of a childhood reclaimed… [Gaël Faye] has understood how to put words on this earth that cannot be summed up by a mass grave

Gaël Faye makes us smile, despite the seriousness of his words

What is autobiographical, and what imagined? In the end it doesn’t matter, when he Gaël Faye gives life to the lost land of his childhood, with poetry and modesty

Small Country is a stirring and graceful tale of stolen innocence and fragmented identity. Hopeful, raw and deeply human, it is a modern classic in the making.

An excellent novel, a model of restraint and quiet literary sophistication

Rich and atmospheric, like Rebecca this novel casts an enduring spell

Full of slow-burning tension

A sweeping saga of secrets and ghosts

A well executed, brooding, creepy atmosphere

A prickly story full of tension

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.