"This novel is cited by many of my author friends as the best in the English language. I, too, am awed by its beauty and intelligence, so much so that I sometimes feel I should stop writing. (I won’t.) The narrator of this story has been bestowed with telepathic powers by virtue of the time of his birth. This proves useful in recounting his life, which is coincidentally wrapped around historical events in India. Rushdie injects much political criticism of the powers that came to be, and this trait in his writing recalls for me George Orwell’s treatise on why we write: politics has much to do with it."

"I don’t hesitate to state that no one becomes a great writer without drinking from the spring of fables. Sometimes their influence shows on the surface and at other times it remains hidden inside the story like bones in a body. In this magnificent collection of dark stories, Vollmann — who many consider having written the Great American Novel more than once — proves himself a master storyteller whose pitcher of that fabled water never runs dry. Drawing on sources from the North, The South, The East and the West he takes us on a journey through many last nights on earth and in the worlds beyond."

"I sometimes hear films described as “Lynchian,” which, I take it, means that they deal with a certain space between light and darkness (or perhaps it’s just a more sophisticated way of saying that something is flat-out creepy). The Scarlet Empress is David Lynch for 1934 . . . and by that I mean that the lighting design is crucial. I love the scene where the freaky Grand Duke Peter (whom I recognized as the crotchety book salesman from my childhood favorite—the ever-so-slightly psychedelically tinged—Bedknobs and Broomsticks) emerges from the shadows to meet his new bride, the Princess Sophia Frederica (played by Marlene Dietrich) for the first time"