Lucid and exhilarating ... A great gift

Lucid and exhilarating ... A great gift

Forest Dark tantalizes and compels ... This is as original and impressive a work of fiction as I have encountered in years; a welcome reminder of how a novel can be defiantly and brilliantly novel

This dazzling dual-narrative novel is a fascinating meditation on fiction itself … Forest Dark finds Krauss at the top of her game. It is blazingly intelligent, elegantly written and a remarkable achievement

A richly layered masterpiece; creative, profound, insightful, deeply serious, effortlessly elegant, both human and humane. Krauss is a poet and a philosopher, and this latest work does what only the very best fiction can do – startles, challenges and enlightens the reader, while showing the familiar world anew … to get lost in Forest Dark is to wonder. It is a pleasure and a privilege to read

A meditation on loss and transformation and an investigation of the mysteries of art and literature and family

Krauss writes with lyricism and mystery, but isn’t above the odd cutting observational detail

Krauss is indeed a highly serious writer and also a very brilliant one … The prose is flawless ... Forest Dark is accomplished, generous and unabashedly serious

A brilliant novel. I am full of admiration

Forest Dark shares much in common with Philip Roth’s writing. Philosophical and intellectual, it explores identity, culture and the connections between the individual and history

Krauss’s elegant, provocative, and mesmerising novel is her best yet. Rich in profound insights and emotional resonance, it follows two characters on their paths to self-realisation … Nicole’s conversations with Friedman and Epstein’s with Klausner about God and the creation of the world are bracingly intellectual and metaphysical. Vivid, intelligent, and often humorous, this novel is a fascinating tour de force

This is a complex and rewarding novel that will linger long after you’ve reached the final page

She gives us a deft and mesmerising portrait of female midlife crisis and the desire to ground one’s self in the world … impossible to put down

Nicole Krauss is always in control of the flow of ideas and allusions even as she evokes her two protagonists’ increasingly feeble control over their own minds and sense of themselves. It is a remarkable accomplishment

From the internationally bestselling, double Orange Prize-shortlisted author Nicole Krauss comes this ambitious novel of astonishing precision and dexterity ... Psychology, theological history, metaphysics and Kafka collide in this beautiful, inventive and intellectual work of fiction that deserves literary-prize recognition

She is evidently a novelist to be taken seriously … a lot of intelligence and writing has gone into this novel’

Her magnificent fourth novel, Forest Dark, a gorgeously written, effortlessly artful imitation of life … One thing is certain, she has not played it safe: Forest Dark is a cerebral novel in which she takes breathtaking risks, questioning received ideas about faith and identity, featuring Freud and, most vividly, Franz Kafka

Forest Dark is the sort of intelligent, serious novel seldom written nowadays. Those shards of gleaming insight are well worth gathering up

Krauss's prose is stately, patient and watchful

She writes with true emotional acuity and tenderness

Crystal clear. A sharp provocative and compelling piece of writing that was worth the wait

Profound … The feelings Epstein and Nicole have about their lives and loves feel hard-earned and true

A vibrant tale of transformation … Bursting with life and humour, this is mesmerising narrative of self-realisation

Scattered moments of insight flash like broken glass in the sun

Krauss has a sharp understanding of how the desire to reinvent themselves can overwhelm people

Intelligent, witty and … always compelling

Nicole Krauss has been hailed by the New York Times as 'one of America’s most important novelists'. She is the author of the international bestsellers, Great House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Orange Prize, and The History of Love, which won the Saroyan Prize for International Literature and France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, and was short-listed for the Orange, Médicis, and Femina prizes.