"They Will Drown in Their Mothers' Tears] has a powerful emotional core... Anyuru's ability to imagine a thread connecting present-day exclusion to future atrocities makes this more than a genre entertainment. He has written a 'state of the nation' novel for a country that seems to be losing faith in the civic values for which it is internationally admired."–Hari Kunzru, New York Times
Anyuru underscores the reality that even parallel worlds involve global connections... Each of his characters feels real, whether experiencing friendship and delight or torture and death. –NPR
"...an ingeniously plotted work...Anyuru's dystopia persuades because it is inextricable from the anxieties of his Muslim characters in contemporary Sweden, from disaffected youths who sell hash and flirt with radicalism to imams preaching forbearance in cramped basement mosques. The grammar of their faith, from its rituals of prayer to its reassurances of eternity, offers a means of orientation beyond precarious circumstances–as well as a counterpoint to the nativist equation of birthplace and belonging. –Harper's Magazine
"It's a rare author who has such sensitivity with explosive materials...I came away thinking of the books as an attempt to forge a more humane means of expression, one that could surmount all our fears and failures." –Washington Post
"[Anyuru]. . . turns a novel about terrorism, time travel and alternative realities into something even stranger than those things: a philosophical meditation on hope." –San Francisco Chronicle
Anyuru doesn't shy away from asking big questions in this novel, and the result is a searing meditation on some of today's most unnerving subjects.–Tor.com
"This novel blends topical societal issues with a speculative literary trope made fresh by being viewed through a powerful psychological lens. Anyuru, a poet as well as playwright and novelist, provides an engaging literary experience, a Möbius strip-like ride-in-time couched in finely-polished language." –Popmatters
This is an intricately woven story, written with a wonderfully poetic sense of language...These are scary times, and Anyuru helps us think about that. –Asymptote
It begins with an assault on a comic book store during an event by a cartoonist who has made jokes at the Prophet's expense, but where it goes from there is strange, magical, and one of the first books to emerge out of our modern time to touch terrorism the way Vonnegut did war. Anyuru doesn't shock the mind, but rather force us to ask new questions about what being a spectator truly means. –John Freeman, Literary Hub
... They Will Drown in Their Mothers' Tears is, I assure you, one of the most phenomenal novels you'll read in this or any year. Its politics are important, but Anyuru's searing dissection of human beings is far more moving. Do not miss this book.–Book Riot
In gorgeous prose, Anyuru's potent story addresses today's anti-immigrant rhetoric and the grim future it could create.–Publishers Weekly
They Will Drown in Their Mothers' Tears is one of the finest novels I've ever read about the nature of radicalization–both of the individual and of societies. There is an inventive and emotionally devastating beauty about this book. That Johannes Anyuru has managed to so precisely capture the metastasis of hatred across time and space shows he is a writer in possession of a ferocious magic. - Omar El Akkad, author of American War
"...a rare, powerful multiverse novel that reflects the best and worst of human potential."– Foreword Reviews, starred review
Between the past, present and future, Johannes Anyuru weaves a novel of powerful elegance, which speaks of the madness we're approaching and a way, perhaps, of escaping it. – Le nouveau magazine littéraire
"Walter Benjamin meeting Paul Virilio, meeting Donna Haraway, it is streams of consciousness full of verve and slang." – Aftonbladet
"They Will Drown is political pamphlet, futuristic dystopia and a personal book of thoughts at the same time. . . . The novel becomes an almost physical experience–a punch." – Goteborgs-Posten
[Anyuru] finds his way into the hardest questions of today without backing off, bursting the surface of the paralyzing fear of terrorism. – Abetet
In imagining a future already at our doorstep, [Anyuru] describes 'a Sweden that Sweden had created to purify itself'. A land where fear and racism justify everything, including the very worst. . . . This disturbing text is discomforting in the face of the dangers of our times. But maybe another look would be beneficial, before it's too late. – Livres Hebdo
