Inventive incident, deft characterization and vivid language are all here

If anyone has better insight into women and their central problem - men - than Margaret Atwood, and can voice them with as much wit, impact and grace, then they haven't started writing yet

Sophisticated, reticent, ornate, stark, supple, stiff, savage or forgiving...they are stories from the prime of life

An outstanding correspondent on the war between the sexes writes as wittily as ever on the hopes and shortcomings of women who bake for poets, sleep with their accountants, attribute their preference for awful men to fearlessness, and don't know how much they scare their own mothers

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