"Dazzling. . . . An uncanny act of ventriloquism, fusing Akutagawa's jagged storytelling voice with Peace's own pulsing narration." –
The New York Times Book Review
"A lyrical masterpiece that takes up Japan and the circumstances of life in the past, present and beyond. . . . Astounding." –
The Japan Times "His best to date, to my mind." –David Mitchell,
The Guardian "Superlative: exacting, precise and filled with the suffocating sense of foreboding generated by the master's own best stories. . . . Peace is not simply a masterfully controlled stylist but a magnificently atmospheric one, composing hypnotic collages." –
Financial Times "One might say that what Peace does with words is impossible to adequately describe with words. . . . [He] has written a biography in fiction. He has assumed Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's writing soul. . . . Yet, the possibility that Peace's fiction is not all his own never enters the reader's mind. To not only attempt such a feat, but to carry it out in a work that is not autobiographical in any shape or form is further proof of Peace's mastery of the art of fiction." –
Counterpunch "David Peace is not a writer who obeys the usual conventions and assumptions: his work defies expectations. . . . With
Patient X, one begins to see that Peace's achievement is not merely as an English prose stylist, or as someone who merges genres, or indeed even as a political writer challenging what appears to be the natural order, but as a transnational figure challenging all categories of containment." –Ian Sansom,
The Guardian "[A] forceful stylist with . . . a taste for the weird, all of which makes [Peace] a good match for Akutagawa." –
The Wall Street Journal "Beautiful, gothic and powerfully mysterious." –
Esquire (UK)
"An imaginative glimpse behind the curtain of a sheltered, definitively troubled writer of a century past. . . . [
Patient X] has an elegant poetry to it." –
Kirkus Reviews "By combining history, oral tradition, surrealism, and a Poe-like grittiness, the always innovative Peace reimagines the life of a gifted writer who died young by his own hand." –
Booklist "A surreal world in which madmen, doppelgangers and demons rub shoulders with Christ, Buddha and Jack the Ripper. . . . One of the most original and intriguing books you'll read this year." –
The Mail on Sunday "Brilliant. . . . Peace is one of the best and most peculiar writers in English today. . . . The kaleidoscopic effect of
Patient X gives English-language audiences their best chance of insight into the strange mental amalgamation that allowed Akutagawa to construct his fiction." –
The Washington Free Beacon "Further proof, if proof were needed, that David Peace is one of Britain's (and the world's) most gifted and original novelists." –
Sydney Morning Herald "A riskily complex novel. . . . Think Dostoevsky, but also Edgar Allan Poe and Paul Auster . . . Intricate. . . . Lyrical." –Clive Lowdon,
The Sunday Times (London)
"The most illuminating commentary possible that Anglophone readers could find on this compelling figure." –
The Daily Telegraph