Small Country

Gaël Faye’s words are a mix of such precision, gentleness and gravitas that finishing this first novel feels like coming out of a heartrending embrace.

Le Point

This beautiful coming-of-age novel conveys a heart-rending desire for peace and harmony. It sets forth a vision of the world that is poetic rather than political, where horror is displaced by wonder.

Le Figaro

Triumphant

le Journal du Dimanche

a melancholic tale of a paradise lost

Grazia

In the summer months, there are two categories of books: those we take on holiday and leave behind in the sand, and those that make their mark on us for life. Small Country by Gaël Faye is firmly part of the latter category.

Le Matin Dimanche

Unforgettable… Gaël Faye’s talent is breathtaking; no country that can give the world a writer like him should ever be called small

Imbolo Mbue, author of Behold the Dreamers

An evocative portrait of what it means to lose one’s freedom and innocence. Gaël Faye’s literary powers lie in his unbridled honesty and his effortless prose. He is a writer of great promise and grace

Chigozie Obioma, author of The Fishermen

Gael Faye is a revelation. Small Country is a luminous and poignant novel about childhood, war, exile and identity… this is literature at its most powerful

Le Parisien Magazine

A magnificent book… a master-stroke of a first novel

Le Parisien

A literary phenomenon

Mehdi Ba, Jeune Afrique

Small Country is a big novel

Canard Enchainé

A literary revelation, subtle and powerful

Elle

Writing that is beautiful, sad and funny. A poetic ‘cry to the world’ about the existence of Gabriel, his family, his friends and everyone else. Before they became "a bunch of exiles, refugees, immigrants and migrants"

Charlie Hebdo

A very personal and intimate novel about an African childhood cut through by socio-political turbulence… Gaël Faye has evoked the darkest pages of contemporary Africa without tipping into pathos

Alain Mabanckou, author of Broken Glass

The dizzying enterprise of a childhood reclaimed… [Gaël Faye] has understood how to put words on this earth that cannot be summed up by a mass grave

Le Temps

Gaël Faye makes us smile, despite the seriousness of his words

Médiapart

What is autobiographical, and what imagined? In the end it doesn’t matter, when he Gaël Faye gives life to the lost land of his childhood, with poetry and modesty

Agence France Presse Mondiales

Precise and potent...deeply affecting... The juxtaposition of everyday growing pains and the fallout from atrocities is heightened by Faye's lovely prose, which builds a heartrending portrait of the end of childhood

Publishers Weekly

Small Country is a stirring and graceful tale of stolen innocence and fragmented identity. Hopeful, raw and deeply human, it is a modern classic in the making.

France Today

an excellent novel, a model of restraint and quiet literary sophistication

Sunday Times

[A] luminous debut novel… This is a book that demanded to be written... With a light touch, Faye dramatises the terrible nostalgia of having lost not only a childhood but also a whole world to war

Nadifa Mohamed, Guardian

as beautiful as it is painful... It's easy to see why it set the French literary scene alight. This is one you won't be abandoning in the hotel library when you leave.

Sam Baker, The Pool

a masterpiece in bringing home the first-hand realities of war... It's heart-wrenching and beautiful and distressingly authentic. Everyone should read it.

The Pool

An excellent novel, a model of restraint and quiet literary sophistication

The Times