Waltenberg

Part spy-thriller, part novel of ideas, Hédi Kaddour's huge, ambitious novel takes on the history of the 20th century, from the First World War to 1991... it is an extraordinary novel. Imagine Smiley's People rewritten by Thomas Mann, and then updated by WG Sebald (a "Colonel Sebald" pops up a couple of times). There are pages, sometimes even chapters, which are as good as anything written in years

Jewish Chronicle

Kaddour's idiosyncratic prose, which plays fast and loose with grammatical convention, is as creative as a black market passport. The result is a long read (at 640 pages) but one that still manages to grip like an ill-gotten dossier

Spectator

At last here is the great French novel we have been waiting twenty years for

Marie Claire

A virtuoso epic novelist

Nouvel Observateur

Magnificent Waltenberg. So vast and so ambitious

Sud Ouest

A bumper espionage thriller between World War I and the Berlin Wall's collapse featuring a German author, an American singer and a French journalist

The List

A great novel... Excellent, complex

Guardian