With great empathy, and through a collage of voices, Phillips has created three distinct portraits. All are superbly crafted and utterly absorbing reads... An important and sobering book, highly relevant today

Phillilps once again demonstrates why he remains one of Britain's pre-eminent writers, ranking alongside the great American figures who were the inspiration behind his decision to become a man of letters - Richard Wright, William Faulkner, James Baldwin

An immensely talented writer, Phillips resurrects their thwarted hopes in this subtle meditation on identity and belonging, which explores how impossible it is to define the composition of a nation

Foreigners is among Caryl Phillips most powerful, empathic, and profoundly affecting books

This is a very good book. Like virtually all good books about the American Indian, it tells a tragic story, but unlike many of them, it tells it well. The author has mastered an extensive and complex subject: he is flexible, well-organized, and sensitive

This is history with a capital H... Read this book

Thubron makes his way with an appealing blend of self-doubt and erudition; he is willing, he is patient,; he knows he cannot resolve but he can attempt to decipher.... He is the reliable storyteller we needed in place of Marco Polo. His stock in trade makes him invaluable to us

Haunting, elegiac, melancholy, magical

An exquisitely written work of great profundity

Shadow of the Silk Road is an astonishing achievement - both the journey and the book. Mr Thubron's tenacity, endurance, stamina and erudition metamorphose into exquisite prose. This is harder to achieve than one might think and can only be the result of huge effort and skill

To those of us addicted to the thrill of travel, that unique and irresistible rush induced by journeying into the unknown, Colin Thubron is God....his socio-political savvy is impeccable, his local knowledge faultless...What a journey, what a book

Impresses with its scholarship and literary craft

Truly, he has written London’s biography. I began rereading it as soon as I finished, and I urge you to read it as soon as possible, so that you can begin rereading it as well

A fat and filling feast: pretty much everything of interest about the capital is crammed into the eight-hundred pages. One cannot but marvel at Ackroyd’s erudition, his energy in marshalling minutiae, his ear for quotation, his flair for dazzling juxtapositions, his vibrant imagination and sheer exuberance

An erudite labour of love, a fan-letter to a fabulous city, and a book one suspects Ackroyd was destined to write. It illuminates the English character, and is darkly humorous in its detail, tumbling through centuries crowded with legendary events and eccentric observations, as exuberant, energetic and alarming as the city itself

A masterpiece

Spellbinding

A sharp, beautifully written but above all truthful account of London…This is the kind of writing that gives intellectuals a good name