Brilliant, dazzling, unsettling; subtle and haunting; complex and multi-layered; deeply moving * Suzi Feay, Independent on Sunday *
A work of literary art, a mellow, beautifully constructed fable about the human hunger for goodness, it is by far the best thing Cartwright has done. * David Robson, Sunday Telegraph *
One of the finest novelists currently at work ... An altogether stunning achievement * D.J. Taylor, Guardian *
Hauntingly brilliant ... It is the best novel I have read this year. * Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph *
Apart from being a profoundly serious writer, Cartwright can also be an abrasively amusing one. Scarcely a page of this book fails to yield some pleasure. WHITE LIGHTNING is a book of substantial merit. * Francis King, Literary Review *
Beguiling. With this novel, Cartwright, a former Whitbread Award winner has put it all together - style, story, theme - to produce something exceptional. * Giles Newington, Irish Times *
Subtle and moving...Cartwright weaves the story of the man and the baboon with a magicians's delicacy...White Lightning underlines the intelligence and breadth of imagination that this former Whitbread Novel of the Year winner brings to every single paragraph of his work. * Daily Mail *
Justin Cartwright's new novel may well be his finest - in an already accomplished oeuvre. Wry, achingly true and profound without being sententious, it's a moving and bleakly funny look at life's hellish demands and occasional moments of happiness. * William Boyd, Guardian Books of the Year *
Cartwright is a wise and perceptive novelist, keen to probe the dark places of the human heart and the complexities of post-colonial Africa, and possessed of a laudable ability to capture life as it rushes past at terrible speed. * James Smart, Sunday Herald *
This is a moving story of a man totally alone, and a powerful evocation of a country yet to come to terms with its tragedy-strewn destiny. * Ros Drinkwater, LiveWire *
Cartwright is a beautifully evocative writer; also one who makes you think... The rhythm is perfect, and almost every page offers such delights. * Allan Massie, Scotsman *
No amount of irony or humour can blunt the remorseless message contained in this tender, terrible tragedy. * Rosemary Goring, Glasgow Herald *
Cartwright's portrayal of the relationship between the man and the baboon is masterly. You know it is going to end in tears - WHITE LIGHTNING is, above all else, a book of echoes - but still the ending packs a punch of frustration and sadness. * Claudia FitzHerbert, Daily Telegraph *
Cartwright is a hugely skilled writer and his novels are always interesting. [He] can produce passages of uncommon beauty. * Michael Thompson-Noel, Financial Times *
Exquisitely moving. * Edwina Currie, New Statesman Books of the Year *
Cartwright is a brilliant observer and writes extremely well. [He] has produced an X-ray of modern man's soul. * Anthony Daniels, Evening Standard *
Cartwright manages to combine the thrilling readability of genre fiction with the unpredictability and strangeness of a literary master. It's astonishing that he still isn't spoken of in the same breath as Amis and McEwen: he ought to be. * Suzi Feay, Independent on Sunday *
This questioning, elegiac novel is much more than just another portrayal of mid-life crisis. It deserves a place beside those accounts of Africa, from Conrad to Naipaul, which encapsulate an outsider's sense of this world as both alluring and forbidding, and always only half-understood. * David Horspool, Times Literary Supplement *
This is fictional skill of the highest order. * Penelope Lively, Independent *