"Its unflinching sense of loss, its claustrophobic acknowledgement of the unwilling interdependence of master and slave, and its subtle prose-style, make it an extraordinary achievement"

"Intense, clear and powerful. The promise, so brilliantly fulfilled in his later work, is clear in this earliest novel”

"His writing gives off whiffs of Conrad, of Nabokov, of Golding, of the Paul Theroux of The Mosquito Coast. But he is none of these, he is a harsh, compelling voice"