The Escape

A novel where the humour is melancholic, the melancholy mischievous and the talent startling

Milan Kundera

Witty and engaging, erudite but fleet and sinuous; the questions he asks are lightly posed, his mock grandeur dispersing in a sea of ridiculous incident and comic undercutting. In this playful, eloquent novel, Adam Thirlwell demonstrates that knowing why one acts as one does is rarely the whole answer, or much more than the beginning of a question

Alex Clark, Times Literary Supplement

Beautifully written, poignant and clever... Thirlwell has a genuinely unique insight into humankind

The Times

The narrative develops a sense of authenticity that is persuasive enough not to be disturbed, even by the inevitable adventurous sex scene

Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph

The Escape is an utterly glorious piece of work...Thirlwell has with this superb book also staked a rightful claim as a literary phenomenon

The Lady

The Escape is one of the best British novels I've read this year for one reason; Thirlwell's prose. At once effervescent and elegant, his narrative voice lifts the novel's lecherous comedy beyond the sublunary lovers' antics into a more rarefied sphere

Sarah Churchwell, Guardian

In The Escape, you can practically see Bellow's Augie March, Roth's Mickey Sabbath and Martin Amis's John Self applauding, ghost-like, from the margins... The novel fizzes with intelligence, verbal skill and humour

Simon Baker, Observer

Thirwell's novel elegantly portrays the ageing Haffner's thrilling attempts to escape from lovers, the mafia, his family and himself

Daily Telegraph

The writing is polished and full of allusions

Brandon Robshaw, Independent on Sunday

A witty, irreverant and elegaic new novel...Haffner is a Quixote of our time

New York Times Book Review

A wittily observant young author... Audacious

Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books