Fascinating . . . an extraordinary mixture of historical detail and sexual meditation . . . G. belongs in the tradition of George Eliot, Tolstoy, D. H. Lawrence and Norman Mailer.

New York Times

Its energy and invention remains alive . . . Michael Ondaatje, most notably, seems to have learned an awful lot from this book, both in terms of its fractured narrative techniques and the way the fleshy frailty of human characters is so exposed by the technology of the early modern age . . . Berger also shares Ondaatje's ability to produce wonderful set pieces.

Guardian

The most interesting novel in English I have read for many years . . . It is one of the few serious attempts for our time to do for the novel what Brecht did for drama: to reshape it in the light of twentieth-century experience . . . A fine, humane and challenging book.

The New Republic