"Hypnotic...a vast tapestry woven in tiny, colourful, intricate detail...a graphic and moving commentary on the futility of war. This magical book stayed in my head long after I had finished it" (Marian Keyes)

"A wonderful epic novel...it has made him a name to conjure with. Both on the large and the small scale it is an absorbing and memorable book...the sweep, invention and warmth of the novel carries one effortlessly along" (Derwent May The Times)

"Captain Corelli's Mandolin achieves that rare feat of saying something new about war...fusing with remarkable felicity the cosmic and the tragic, the lyrical and the epic... And without offering easy answers, it poses difficult questions about love and suspicion, trust and betrayal, faith and despair, creativity and destruction" (André Brink Times Literary Supplement)

"Louis de Bernières is in the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh...he has only to look into his world, one senses, for it to rush into reality, colours and touch and taste" (Evening Standard)

"An emotional, funny, stunning novel which swings with wide smoothnes s between joy and bleakness, personal lives and history...it's lyrical and angry, satirical and earnest" (Observer)