Sam Jordison, The Guardian
‘Much has been said about the richness of Ondaatje’s writing, the sensuousness of his physical descriptions and his poet’s gift for using well-timed silences and ellipses to speak volumes. All that’s true. But the thing that impressed me most as I read the book this time around is its hard centre. It may come wrapped in musky perfume, but Ondaatje’s prose could go a few rounds with Hemingway and probably knock out Kipling, too.’
Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times
‘Ondaatje is a poet with a mythic imagination and this novel unfolds in prose of such breathtaking lyric and muscular beauty that the reading of it becomes almost a physical experience.’
Publishers Weekly
‘A poet’s sensitive, deep-seeing eye, a fluid, sensuous prose and imaginative juxtapositions of characters and events distinguish Canadian author Ondaatje’s impressive novels (Coming Through Slaughter; In the Skin of a Lion; etc.). Here again he brings together disparate characters whose lives intersect at a crucial moment in history, and introduces real-life figures who add dimension and credibility to the story.’
Michael Dirda, The Globe and Mail
‘It promises serenity and order in the deliberateness of its prose, but repeatedly knocks the reader off balance, and ends by a sudden widening of its vistas into our fallen modern world. That climax is fully prepared, but strikes, just a little, a tone of political correctness.’