A gift from heaven, a marvel of good writing, an unashamed and inventive approximation to the unbearable weight of memory. I have been waiting for some time for an account like Refusal. I did not expect this quality and had not dared hope for it... Soon only fiction - that is the paradox, the mystery of literature - will be able to not merely bring to life, but also enrich this memory

The most remarkable, awake-all-night-to-finish read

A sordid tragedy that makes us for the thousandth time question the worth of human existence. The impression remains with the reader that it is the work of a woman who has the strength of one of the masters like Balzac or Dostoyevsky

A powerful description of a man's relentless decline

Striking first work, sensitively translated by Sandra Smith

A novel that resonates across the pages with the narrative mastery of the griot's voice

A hauntingly beautiful elegy for those who killed and died in the service of a history that was not their own. Like Ha Jin's magisterial War Trash, Burma Boy wields the two greatest weapons in the novelist's arsenal - imagination and empathy - to shattering effect

Original ...often very funny. A magical book

A riveting read, convincingly imagined and cinematically told. Bandele is a gifted storyteller

A truly fantastic book. A caesarean cut through terrifying and hilarious history

It is quite outstanding, full of beauty, pain and truth... We are lucky to have this book

The facts surrounding the discovery of this book are as remarkable as its contents are magnificent... A triumph of indomitability and a masterwork of literary accomplishment

Deftly translated by Sandra Smith, this is possibly the most devastating indictment of French manners and morals since Madame Bovary, as hypnotic as Proust at the biscuit tin, as gruelling as Genet on the prowl. Irène Nemirovsky is, on this evidence, a novelist of the very first order, perceptive to a fault and sly in her emotional restraint

An heroic attempt to write a novel about a nightmare in which the author is entirely embedded

Read this haunting novel, then read [Nemirovsky’s] letters in this edition to feel the full force of the work

While marked by poppy wearing and memorial ceremonies, the First World War is also sustained through family history, handed down from one generation to the next. No book better articulates the impact of this narrative than Stephen Faulks’ Birdsong.

A truly amazing read

I’d never read such descriptive literature, and couldn’t sleep at night for thinking about what I’d just read. His [Faulks] portrayal of terror on the battlefield is so powerful

My all-time favourite book