Shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, deWitt's dazzlingly original second novel is a darkly funny, offbeat western about a reluctant assassin and his murderous brother.

Blackly hilarious

Confirms deWitt as one of the most talented young writers around

A witty noir version of Don Quixote... a blackly comic fable about the usual wild west themes: emptiness, loneliness and the hollow lure of gold

Unsettling, compelling and deeply strange... this book explores a world in which civilisation, as we know it, has not yet emerged. It has much to say about the business of being human

So good, so funny and so sad

If Cormac McCarthy had a sense of humor, he might have concocted a story like Patrick DeWitt's bloody, darkly funny western The Sisters Brothers... [DeWitt has] a skillfully polished voice and a penchant for gleefully looking under bloody bandages. [It's] smooth and seamless, shot through with dark humor, pared and antique without being Baroque.

A boldly eloquent adventure and a novel about a man trying to live a better life

A masterclass on the twists of the mind and heart

A rip-roaring romp around the Wild West... deWitt is a proper American novelist who is well on the way to greatness

The sharpest novel published this year was The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt. Like Flannery O'Connor shot through with the Coen brothers, it was a tonic dash of the cowboy surreal and I loved it.

Few narrators this year have been funnier than Eli, one half of Patrick deWitt's eponymous duo The Sisters Brothers. His drawling, dark, laconic and heartbreaking voice turns a wry Western into a work of great strangeness and verve

Bold and beautifully simple ... it is intermittently moving, consistently very funny, and above all, original

A western that reads like Cormac McCarthy with a better sense of humour

A stylistically impressive, darkly comic reworking of the traditional western in Patrick deWitt's Booker-shortlisted story of money revenge and morality

The adventure is narrated in deadpan style by Eli, who is frequently driven to despair by the activities of his elder brother ... Eli emerges as a complex figure; a good man driven to do bad things. And you know you're absorbed in a true western when you find yourself shedding a tear at the death of his horse'

This tale of mercenary brothers is often touching, as the gentler of the two men, Eli Sisters, is really searching for love. DeWitt slow his narrative down stylistically but gives his dubious protagonists an engaging enough picaresque journey

This Booker-shortlisted novel is a playful often surreal take on the classic western, following two homicidal brothers as they hunt for a man named Hermann during the 1850s gold rush

One of the finest novels I've read in ages and paints the colours of the Wild West as beautifully as a Sergio Leone film

It's fantastic, you must read it ... it's one of those books that just grabs you, its so beautiful and funny and spare

I read this after being shortlisted along with Patrick for the Man Booker prize, and for my money it would have been a worthy winner ... this story of a pair of sibling killers chasing down their fate crackles with dry wit, its brutal violence studded with moments of heartbreaking humanity. In Eli Sisters, DeWitt creates a narrator who lives and breathes; a monster with whom the reader sympathises, a lost soul searching for virtue in the compassionless world of gold rushes and gunfights. A wise, funny, startling book about dreams both noble and ragged, and of the lengths we'll go to fulfil them

We all loved this book...one of the best books ever on the bookclub.

An enjoyable read, and its overall strangeness seems to tease the reader into seeking deeper meanings

deWitt's inspired, many-layered yarn about loneliness, friendship and love is as entertaining and as stylistically accomplished as it is deeply moving

Patrick deWitt's superb second novel was deservedly shortlisted for last year's Man Booker prize. It's highly original and darkly comic, and has the offbeat quality of a Coen brothers film

One of the most extraordinary books I've ever read

Gripping and darkly humorous, the deadpan writing style is a joy and the is sharp

A grippingly propulsive yarn set in the gold-rush era of the American West and flecked through with dark humour

deWitt's playful, almost surreal take on the classic western follows two violent brothers as they wreak havoc during the 1850s goldrush

A rip-roaring, gun-slinging gallop through 19th Century America ... Warm, darkly comic and thrillingly adventurous, you won't be able to put this down

The language is extraordinarily good, very funny and eloquent

This novel is about two killer hitmen who you actually find yourself falling in love with

An unexpected pleasure... It has the stripped power of a fable, yet derives its persuasiveness from the voice of the narrator

I loved it so much, I read it twice! It's funny as well as poignant. It's so beautiful and fascinating. I adored it

[It] has a lovely fragility and an emotional core that rises above its clever premise and style

A superb Western mixed with profound life lessons

PATRICK DEWITT's first novel, Ablutions, was published by Granta Books in 2009. His second novel, The Sisters Brothers, won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Governor General Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. He lives in Portland, Oregon.