Solstads construction of reality is uniquely his own mad, sad and funny the behavioural possibilities of the novel are subtly and fundamentally enlarged. -- Geoff Dyer * Observer *
All of the whispers have been right: Solstad is a vital novelist. -- Charles Finch * New York Times *
Solstad is expert in delineating the absurdities of existence Solstad exposes us to ourselves. -- David Mills * Sunday Times *
Hes a kind of surrealistic writer... I think thats serious literature. -- Haruki Murakami
His language sparkles with its new old-fashioned elegance. -- Karl Ove Knausgaard
He doesnt write to please other people... Do exactly what you want, thats my idea the drama exists in his voice, in his comments and views, and that works, it helps connect the reader to the story. -- Lydia Davis
Solstad's novels are full of dryly comic, densely existential despair . . . reminiscent of Witold Gombrowicz, with his keen sense of the absurd. Both translators Tiina Nunnally and Steven T. Murray have rendered Solstad's rhythms into wonderfully idiosyncratic English. -- Nathan Kapp * Times Literary Supplement *
[Solstad] is a wonderful stylist whose prose gives the impression of not being stylised at all The prose is distracted and persistent, compelling and compelled. -- Frank Lawton * Literary Review *
Before Knausgaard, Norway had Solstad, whose pitiless, mesmeric, darkly comic stories of quiet desperation here its a failed librarian turn banality to sublimity. * The Arts Desk *
An idiosyncratic, at times impish writer, whose voice insinuating yet direct, droll but aghast is impossible to unhear once youve encountered it. * The White Review *
In Norway, Solstad is as celebrated as, say, Don DeLillo or Toni Morrison [in the US]... An utterly hypnotic and utterly humane writer. -- James Wood
Without question Norway's bravest, most intelligent novelist. -- Per Petterson
Solstad is a writer of depth. -- Peter Handke
Since he published his first book of stories in 1965, Dag Solstad has been to Scandinavian literature what Philip Roth has been to American letters or Gunter Grass to German writing: an unavoidable voice. * Paris Review *
Solstads unusual, entertaining novel of restrained humor follows its protagonist, T Singer, over a lifetime of nonengagement... [it] brilliantly shows the humor and pain of obsessiveness, and the anxious, analytic Singer emerges as an enduring creation. * Publishers Weekly *
