"There is no one writing in English like this: engaged humanity achieving a hard-won wisdom. It is powerful stuff." --The Sunday Times (London)

"A book of reportage through which the dead walk with all the vibrancy of the living. . . . A fact-based but also imaginative work that excavates history and places it into the present." --The Wall Street Journal

"A powerful and strikingly original portrait of a country whose history is a nightmare from which it cannot wake." --The Times Literary Supplement (London)

"A contribution to healing the wounds that remain open in Spain to this day. . . . Cercas keeps his readers curious to the end." --The New York Times Book Review

"A brave, persuasive novel." --El País

"A beautiful, moving story. . . . Cercas is a marvelous writer, and his character studies . . . are masterly. Ultimately, grappling with the enormously nuanced, continuing story of sacrifice, passion, and dishonor allowed for significant forgiveness and release." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A remarkable act of personal history: brave, revelatory, and unflinchingly honest." --William Boyd

"Cercas's candid wranglings with how to tell this tale . . . make him a wonderfully warm and wise guide through this sad, small chapter of the Spanish Civil War." --The Times (London)

"A subversive and disenchanted view of war in general and the Spanish conflict in particular. . . . It can be moving, unexpectedly funny, racy, demotic or deadpan." --The Spectator

"[A] cleverly crafted memoir. . . . While reflecting on his own life and family, Cercas vividly portrays a complex figure." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"I couldn't put the book down. . . . Marvelously written. . . . A major achievement, in historical, literary, and moral terms." --Jay Nordlinger, National Review

"A fascinating, complicated portrait of a young soldier driven to action by the crises of his time and of the present-day relative who seeks to understand him. . . . Cercas employs the storytelling techniques of dramatic literature to confront [an] uncomfortable facet of his family's and his country's history. . . . [He] pulls the reader into his investigative journey." --Booklist

"A magisterial book on the hazardous trajectory of one man." --La Croix