Zakhar Prilepin

"The style alone is astounding – a marvellous combination of such contradictory attributes as “wonderful” and “impudent”, brought about through the close parallels between poetic images and the purely realistic and bloody every day details of war."
ROSSIISKY PISATEL

"The first real novel about this war. And it is not just about Chechnya. There are a lot of memory excerpts, flashbacks, penetrating thoughts and character descriptions – and not a hint of journalism or rhetoric."
KONSERVATOR

"It is one of the rare instances in contemporary literature where talent, intellect and a soul burning with the experience of war are not spread across a variety of destinies but come together in one person… it is not graveside prose but rather literature in the tradition of the 1920’s… not Bondarev or Bykov, but Gazdanov, Babel"
L. YUZEFOVICH