"Beautifully poised between comedy and dread...splendidly, elegantly phrased." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"It takes a special kind of genius to be able to recreate such convincing early 19th-century prose... A bravura display of writing skill." - The Guardian

"A first-rate historical novel that is also a novel of ideas--a taut, beautifully controlled short book with none of the windiness or costumed pageantry so often associated with fiction attempts to reanimate the past... [It is] the best of Golding''s novels since Lord of the Flies." - The New York Review of Books

"As skillful and resonant as the best of William Golding''s other novels, which are among the best written by any Englishman these past twenty-five years." - The New York Times Book Review

"An extraordinary tour de force that has something in common with Melville''s Billy Budd, Conrad''s Nigger of the Narcissus and even Coleridge''s The Ancient Mariner... Provides readers with still another instance of William Golding''s virtuosity and moral stamina." - Philadelphia Inquirer