"As with all Andrei Tarkovsky films, Stalker deserves multiple viewings. At three hours, and with most shots exceeding a full minute in length, it demands a commitment from the viewer. The production was infamous, a majority of the footage was lost and had to be reshot, and multiple cast and crew members died from cancer, which was attributed by many involved to toxic conditions at some of the shooting locations. The results of the film, however, are as unique as they are impressive. The imagery and symbolism remain some of the most beautiful and haunting ever put on film. And the soundtrack and score are interwoven with the images in a style not unlike the collaborations of Kobayashi and Takemitsu, where sounds are processed and stretched to disorient and then reconnect the viewer."

"This slim novel is one of the most intriguing works of literature I have come upon in a long while. Part mystery, part metaphysical journey, part fairy tale, part adult love story, it brought me to a state of the most welcome strangeness, similar to the one I sought out as a young reader of books that challenged how we perceive reality and reconstruct it in text. In the narrative’s mysterious, slow burn of a chase, a woman who has left her husband is tracked down in The Taiga, a territory where the laws of nature are as much out of joint as the rules of its isolated human society. In its uneasy atmosphere there are echoes from Tarkovsky's film Stalker as well as from golden age private eye novels."