Haunts of the Black Masseur

[Sprawson] has an ornate style of prose, apparently smooth, but rippling with wit and candour… Haunts of the Black Masseur was a delight when I read it first time round and 25 years on, it strikes me as even better

Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

­Original and sparkling… A haunting, sensual, slippery read that will make you long for seaweed on your skin and sand between your toes. A must for swimmers

Rebecca Wallersteiner, The Lady

An exhilarating plunge into some of the deepest pools inside our heads... Magnificently obsessive, this social and cultural history of swimming is the best book I read this year

J G Ballard

Magnificent

Observer

Fascinating

Sunday Times

A wholly original idea...a brilliant translation of a singular passion

Alan Ross, Times Literary Supplement

A devoted and luminously romantic history of swimming

Guardian

One wants to put it down - and jump straight into the pool

Independent

A delightful, profound cultural and literary history of swimming, bathing and the social meanings of water from ancient Greece to the modern Olympics

Publisher’s Weekly

All too rarely does a book of striking originality float to the surface; this is one

Kirkus

Inspired by his own obsession with immersion, Charles Sprawson has written a mesmeric account, both sensual and erudite, of individual and cultural preoccupations with water.

London Evening Standard

This is an agreeably obsessive book, full of unusual information

Independent on Sunday

An extraordinary book: I thought I wouldn't care a fig for it but was suddenly and immediately enthralled. Exceptionally entertaining and compelling

Joanna Lumley