Named a Flavorwire Best Independent Book of 2015 "Wolfgang Hilbig is an artist of immense stature,"
– László Krasznahorkai, recipient of the 2015 International Man Booker Prize and author of Satantango and Seiobo There Below "-Evokes the luminous prose of W.G. Sebald. . . . Hilbig's masterly work captures the angst of a man unable to escape the wreckage of his past."
– The New York Times "Out of the ugliness of history and the wasted landscape of his home, he has created stories of disconsolate beauty."
– The Wall Street Journal "Unusually accessible for Hilbig . . . the paralyzing duality of identity in his relationship to East and West runs through the collection."
– the Times Literary Supplement "[Hilbig writes as] Edgar Allan Poe could have written if he had been born in Communist East Germany."
– Los Angeles Review of Books "Hilbig's prose is vivid and poetic, and a Kafkaesque touch gives these stories ample atmosphere."
– Publishers Weekly "Beautiful, dream-like stories of the pain and wonder of becoming oneself." –
Die Zeit "Wolfgang Hilbig is on the track of the truth. Once he has found it, he is not afraid to look it straight in the face." –
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung "Pure, masterful . . . a calmly, powerfully flowing stream of words that stops time like an endless spell of intoxication." –
Süddeutsche Zeitung
