"One of the best works of fiction about Africa I've ever read." – The New Statesman
"Lionel Shriver has written a sardonic, sexy, salutary novel about, of all things, population control." – The New Scientist
"Shriver steers her plot through some truly outrageous argument. But her work is all the more valuable for its flagrant defiance of political correctness...the controversy that consumes [the story] is compelling." – The Times (London)
"Every now and then a modern novel about Africa comes along that neither trades on the continent as 'exotica' nor piously makes literary capital out of human misery–that doesn't go woozy at the sight of a wildebeest, that might be more cruel than caring, but in fact isn't. John Updike's The Coup was one such, as was Paul Theroux's Jungle Lovers; Lionel Shriver, an American woman already praised for Ordinary Decent Criminals, has produced another." – Times Literary Supplement
