"A passionate and often radical novel of ideas that affords all the old-fashioned pleasures of a traditional historical novel." --The New York Times

"A great novel. It repeatedly scales heights of complex thought, passion, and expression that few American writers ever approach, while reimagining a majestic love story in dazzling style." --Philadelphia Inquirer

"A panoramic, passionately feminist examination of the changing shape of Western civilization since the Age of Enlightenment. Sontag's book is a sweeping, exquisitely detailed picture of Europe in the final decades of the eighteenth century." --Chicago Sun-Times

"A slippery, intelligent, provocative, and gripping book." --The Washington Post Book World

"A novel Susan Sontag was destined to write, a shift from the moral intelligence of the essayist to the intelligent heart of the novelist. To her admirers, the novel will only confirm her originality, and perhaps win over a whole new set of readers. For The Volcano Lover is not just a thinking woman's (or man's) historical romance but a sly, luminously insightful, provocative novel." --The Nation

"A brilliant performance." --Chicago Tribune

"An historical tour de force. This tale of eighteenth-century romance and revolution is certain to charm readers who enjoy the postmodern potboilers of Umberto Eco and A. S. Byatt." --Kirkus Review