It is an unlikely subject for a bestseller. Yet in Sweden, the voices that have come from this ordinary little village have become like an existential meditation on what it is to be alive, to be human, creatures living in time while the river runs on and wolves howl in the woods ... Its specificity allows it to be universal. ... Garrulous, taciturn, gossipy, warm-hearted, reserved or matter-of-fact, a character speaks and then they slip quietly away ... we listen to them like something caught on the wind ... Why is this so moving and so strangely beckoning? I think precisely because Osebol bears witness to ordinary lives. It gives us, unmediated, the voices of people who are usually unheard and invites us to pay attention to small things. It's also a book ... about the many meanings of home ... what it is to put down roots and belong ... Compelling

Transporting ... It is particular in its focus on one place ... and universal in its reminders that nothing stays the same. You feel as though you're in among them

The year's most pleasing books have been those that delivered the most unexpected delights. Marit Kapla's Osebol (Allen Lane) renders the oral history of a small Swedish village since 1945 into verse. A variety of voices form a symphonic whole ruminating on seasons passing, people leaving and a way of life almost disappearing

A fugue in many voices ... Osebol comes to life as the book progresses, like a dusty mosaic splashed with water ... [In] sudden shifts of tone, the book catches the rhythm of life itself ... Osebol is a magnificent success; it is hard to imagine it better, or even different - it exists on its own terms. Kapla is a magician. How can she be called 'the author' when not a word is hers? But it was she who crafted it, weighing themes and balancing light and shade ... The translator Peter Graves has miraculously maintained the original rhythm - or perhaps he has smelted Swedish phrases into English and forged a new one ... The book conjures the Welsh notion of hiraeth, that soul-deep longing for the landscape of home ... mesmerizing ... Osebol is a song of the ages

Engrossing and humbling and quietly revelatory

Osebol is a kind of simple, pared-back and down-to-earth masterpiece. I suspect that centuries from now it will be read and loved for the glimpse it gives into the lives of "ordinary" people in this moment in time. There aren't many books I am jealous of, and wish I had written ... but I really wish I had written this. I hope a lot of people read it and understand just how brilliant it is

Osebol is a fascinating and revealing immersion in another culture and landscape. I was riveted by these life stories of young and old, especially the accounts of those who remember how things used to be - of picking berries in the forest and sharing the potato harvest. A wonderful read

They speak of the forest, the bridge, the church, the river and the road, as if drawing a map ... In 2016 and 2017, Kapla, who grew up in Osebol, interviewed almost every adult in the village, ranging in age from 18 to 92 ... [she] takes a poet's approach, attending to the rhythms of thought and breaking the natural phrase as if breaking a surface. Her translator, Peter Graves, more than rises to the challenge this presents. He has found a register in English - both offhand and choral - that brings the voices together without letting them merge ... these eight hundred sparse pages offer as much as a 19th-century novel: a looming past and destabilised present, sweethearts and lonely hearts, casualties and entrepreneurs, grand plans, quiet satisfactions, and a fair amount of settling and enduring ... Each memory sits within the rest and moves us towards the speaker's core

His aim, triumphantly achieved, is to engage our sympathies with people whose similarities to us are as fascinating as their differences

Perhaps the most enjoyable history book I've read all year

The endlessly inventive Ian Mortimer is the most remarkable medieval historian of our time

Fascinating

Fiercely smart, strange, surprising

Extremely intriguing . . . I found myself completely absorbed. Fascinating

Everything is illuminated, magnified, revisioned: sexual desire, motherhood, family. Her writing is unorthodox, unnerving, and very exciting

An outstanding achievement. Fierce Appetites defies easy categorization, is brilliantly written and simply deserves to be read

I absolutely loved this utterly original book. Immersing myself in Elizabeth Boyle's considerable brain was a true privilege, and the way she uses medieval narratives to unpick her own present was endlessly surprising and beautiful. I read it in two sittings, devouring her perspective on life, love, loss

[A] marvellous, astonishing, funny, moving, wise, reflective, deeply scholarly, fascinating book

All twelve essays are freighted with that fierceness the title trumpets

This book is extraordinary . . . a wonderful work of women's memoir

Three formidable volumes have appeared, admirably edited by Simon Heffer displaying considerable scholarship . . . Channon, for all his misjudgements, ingratiating behaviour and bigotry, is revealing about public and private life, society and sexuality, and honest about himself to a degree that makes these Diaries a weird kind of masterpiece.

The greatest British diarist of the 20th century. A feast of weapons-grade above-stairs gossip.

Wickedly entertaining . . . scrupulously edited and annotated by Simon Heffer. Genuinely shocking, and still revelatory.

Channon's chief virtue as a writer is his abiding awareness that dullness is the worst sin of all, and for this reason they're among the most glittering and enjoyable [diaries] ever written.

Through interviews and personal experience, Katja Hoyer brings a new understanding to a country that has now vanished ... A fresh look at what life was like for average people in East Germany ... intriguing and surprising

With Beyond the Wall, Katja Hoyer confirms her place as one of the best young historians writing in English today. On the heels of her superb Blood and Iron, about the rise and fall of the Second Reich, comes another masterpiece, this one about the aftermath of the Third Reich in the East. Well-researched, well-written and profoundly insightful, it explodes many of the lazy Western cliches about East Germany

Utterly brilliant. This gripping account of East Germany sheds new light on what for many of us remains an opaque chapter of history. Authoritative, lively and profoundly human, it is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand post-WW2 Europe

A gripping and nuanced history of the GDR from its beginnings as a separate German socialist state against the wishes of Stalin to its final rapprochement with its Western other against those of Gorbachev. Beyond the Wall is a unique fresco of everyday reality in East Germany. Elegantly moving between diplomatic history, political economy and cultural analysis, this is an essential read to understand not only the life and death of the GDR but also the parts of it that still survive in the emotions of its former citizens.

Superb, totally fascinating and compelling, Katja Hoyer's first full history of East Germany's rise and fall is a work of revelatory original research - and a gripping read with a brilliant cast of characters. Essential reading

A beyond-brilliant new picture of the rise and fall of the East German state. Katja Hoyer gives us not only pin-sharp historical analysis, but an up-close and personal view of both key characters and ordinary citizens whose lives charted some of the darkest hours of the Cold War. If you thought you knew the history of East Germany, think again. An utterly riveting read

A fantastic, sparkling book, filled with insights not only about East Germany but about the Cold War, Europe and the forging of the 20th and 21st centuries

The joke has it that the duty of the last East German to escape from the country was to turn off the lights. In Beyond the Wall Katja Hoyer turns the light back on and gives us the best kind of history: frank, vivid, nuanced and filled with interesting people

A refreshing and eye-opening book on a country that is routinely reduced to cartoonish cliché. Beyond the Wall is a tribute to the ordinary East Germans who built themselves a society that - for a time - worked for them, a society carved out of a state founded in the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism

A colourful and often revelatory re-appraisal of one of modern history's most fascinating political curiosities. Katja Hoyer skilfully weaves diverse political and private lives together, from the communist elite to ordinary East Germans

Katja Hoyer is becoming the authoritative voice in the English speaking world for all things German. Thanks to her, German history has the prominence in the Anglosphere it certainly deserves.

Katja Hoyer brilliantly shows that the history of East Germany was a significant chapter of German history, not just a footnote to it or a copy of the Soviet Union. To understand Germany today we have to grapple with the history and legacy of its all but dismissed East

Katja Hoyer's return to discover what happened to her homeland - the old East Germany - is an excellent counterpoint to Stasiland by Anna Funder

Beguiling and beautifully written, this is the work of an author with a bright future

Coruscating originality, emotional potency, astonishing artistic vim... This signals the arrival of a truly breathtaking literary voice... A scintillating tour de force

Fierce and accomplished, Assembly interrogates the high cost of surviving in a system designed to exclude you

I was blown away by Assembly, an astonishing book that forces us to see what's underpinning absolutely everything

Coiled and charged, a small shockwave... Sometimes you come across a short novel of such compressed intensity that you wonder why anyone would bother reading longer narratives... [Assembly] casts a huge shadow

A masterwork . . . it contains centuries of wisdom, aesthetic experimentation and history. Brown handles her debut with a surgeon's control and a musician's sensitivity to sound

An extraordinary book, and a compelling read that had me not only gripped but immediately determined to listen again... Highly recommended

'As utterly, urgently brilliant as everyone has said. A needle driven directly into the sclerotic heart of contemporary Britain. Beautiful proof that you don't need to write a long book, just a good book'

Every line of this electrifying debut novel pulses with canny social critique

Devastatingly eloquent, bold, poignant

An achievement that will leave you wondering just how it's possible that this is only the author's very first work... Brown packs so much commentary and insight inside of every single sentence... Original and startling all at once. After reading Assembly, I cannot wait to see what Natasha Brown does next

[Brown's] work is like that of an excellent photographer - you feel like you are finally seeing the world sharply and without the common filters. That is hypnotising

A brilliantly compressed, existentially daring study of a high-flying Black woman negotiating the British establishment