Gunesekera's lush descriptions make you see and smell the island and feel its hot, damp air on your skin

Spectator

A terrific read: pacy, political, moral, atmospheric and yes, definitely romantic ...The film is waiting to be made. It's all there: an inverted but murky Pride and Prejudice, paradise spoilt, ill-fated lovers, rascals, imperial wickedness, the cunning of natives, plots and melees and a host of fabulous flowers ... Exquisite prose awakens all the senses

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Independent

Gunesekera is strikingly adept at delineating the landscape of rootlessness ... [He] has a gentle, generous, deceptively light touch

Sunday Times

Gunesekera's mellifluous prose alone is worth the price of admission. His description here of a first kiss has surely never been bettered

Daily Mail

Gunesekera's storytelling is languorous, atmospheric, imagistic

Guardian

Seriously and movingly, The Prisoner of Paradise contains a very modern message: a plea for the book. It has as much to say about writing as it has about love and colonial misery ... Here are the genuine answers, colourful, arresting, fresh and enormous as any opera

Todd McEwan, Glasgow Herald