‘No one inhabits character as intensely and subtly as Mars-Jones. Batlava Lake is therefore completely convincing as an everyman narrative – we know people exactly like Barry Ashton, and may even be exactly like him – but there's a larger truth here too, about clashes of cultures and history, that make this an important and highly recommended book.’
— Lee Child

‘Mars-Jones delivers a wry and offbeat story of a civilian man stationed in Pristina, the capital city of Kosovo, during the Kosovo War…. Mars-Jones’s intensely comical depiction of a thoroughly British state of mind makes this a hoot.’ 

— Publishers Weekly

‘As a dark satire of 1990s liberal interventionism and the blithe ignorance that in reality underlay many peacekeeping missions, Batlava Lake is a suitably coruscating and intricately constructed piece of work.’

— Lucian Robinson, Times Literary Supplement