Nicholas Delbanco

“We’re in the presence of an author both wholly assured and tentative, both nagged by the complexities of narrative and able to exploit them.”

Jennifer Egan is the prodigiously talented author of seven works of fiction, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad (2011).

“This book is both witty and fierce. It’s a gift that keeps on giving, and we can only hope its nonagenarian author continues to do so as well.”

That Jonathan Franzen has large ambitions as an author is not news. Nor is it news that his success has been large.

The question of literature composed in a second language is a vexed and interesting one.

“Barnes is a delightful raconteur, and there’s a good deal of first-person rumination here throughout.

“Line after line and scene after scene delight the reader with its account of a world gone by but well worth the returning to, if only as a tourist.

“David Szalay’s art accomplishes what arithmetic can’t: The whole adds up to more than its individual components, and in sum his Turbulence is a tour de force.”

We know more about William Shakespeare than we know about the lives and work of most of his contemporaries; the documentary record, though sparse, is substantial.

“There’s a lilting music to this writer’s sentences, a love of language throughout.”

“the writing soars. Stoner redux is a dream come true for those who dream of immortality; the afterlife of the novel beggars its beginning.”