PositiveThe Financial Times...there is so much skill in these stories that it takes a second reading to realise just how many of Nam’s characters are, ultimately, caricatures. The Colombians are violent criminals; the Japanese wonder if they are the reincarnated spirits of dead pine trees; the Iranians talk about the Prophet Mohammed ... If The Boat is a manifesto – an insistence that the writer can get into the souls of people from unknown cultures – then it is a partial success. But the attempt is bold and worthwhile ... A laudable effort to leave what is known for the wide world beyond.
