RaveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)A curiously old-fashioned novel ... The writing (in translation from the German by Jamie Bulloch) is richly detailed ... The characters are distinctively drawn and there is particular delight to be found in many of the minor ones ... At times, the sweep of historical events collides rather than colludes with the family’s more private dramas, but the author has the ability to give convincing life to both. With a talent for description and the instincts of a natural storyteller, he has a bright future.
John Le Carré
RaveThe Spectator (UK)... a very fine finale ... Silverview is short and brisk (roughly half the length of any of the Karla trilogy) but is the better for it. There are no longueurs. As ever with le Carré, the most intriguing character is the most enigmatic, and most damaged. At the book’s end, a final twist emerges that results, surprisingly, not from the kind of conspiracy le Carré loved to concoct but from a sublimely imagined cock-up ... Time and again, le Carré was able to weave an entrancing, haunting world of his own, a feat repeated in Silverview. There are few writers to match him, and fewer who are still alive.
