His sense of place is unerring, his details exact, felicitous, often rising to the luminosity of poetry - whether he is writing of coral reefs, or clove farms, or the markets of Zanzibar and Pemba. There is no trace of colonial, condescending or Orientalist attitudes in his writing
-- Neel Mukherjee * The Times *
A rewarding, intelligent novel that displays his now characteristic blend of experience, imagination and intimate research
-- Henry Hitchings * Financial Times *
[Foden] is a master of ambiguity where it is welcome, and discomfort where it is not. Above all, he knows how to use individual lives to dramatise and explain external events that impact on us all
-- Anthony Holden * Observer *
[Foden's] fiction is so convincing that it is hard not to feel that you are reading the real inside story. In his hands, terrorists are no longer caricatures of fundamentalist evil, but men whose actions seem understandable, who exist in three dimensions
-- Edward Marriot * Evening Standard *
Thrills in its astute entangling of East and West
-- Philip Horne * Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year *
A splendid adventure
-- Allan Laing * Herald, Books of the Year *
Foden pulls off a difficult feat - he adds something fresh to the most reported news events of the last half century
-- Harry Mount * Spectator *
An unusual and refreshing novel; it is willing to engage with important political issues, and does so without oversimplifying them
-- William Skidelsky * Times Literary Supplement *
Foden's tense, involving, well constructed book presents history as the participants might have seen it
-- James Francken * London Review of Books *
