"This restless, vibrant, indelibly funny novel tackles migration, cultural identity, and the family saga with energetic good cheer. You can tell how much Smith loves her characters, and she makes me love them, too."

"Margaret Thatcher loomed over my youth, and so she did with Damian Barr’s, though more pointedly and intricately woven in his. This is harrowing family saga but written with an abundance of wit and tenderness."

"Atwood keeps several plates spinning in this engrossing novel. What a gleeful storyteller she is. Her book is part family saga and part Gothic fantasy, with a plot twist near the end which casts the whole book in a dazzling new light."

"Five volumes of sheer bliss. There’s almost nothing fiction can offer that isn’t in this book: an 18th Century, post-modern, Zen, worldly, otherworldly, gorgeous, funny, sorrowful, gripping, saga of a large, staggeringly wealthy Qin Dynasty family. Stunningly well translated, (the first three volumes by David Hawkes, the final two by John Minford, Hawkes’ son-in-law). It takes a while (or it did me) to keep the many, many characters straight, but it’s definitely worth the trouble."