The Dancer Upstairs

Astoundingly good... This dramatic, moving story demands you put your life on hold until it is finished * Guardian *
Shakespeare is interested in grand themes: love, vocation, politics and the corrupting power of moral and ideological absolutes... The Dancer Upstairs will be enjoyed by any kind of reader... It is enviably good, a genuinely fine novel from a writer who possesses real heart and flair * Sunday Times *
In addition to being a satisfyingly rich tale or romance this is a highly intelligent examination of Peruvian - and South American - reality... Funny and devastating... I was riveted by this superb novel * New Statesman *
As cracking a story as any yarn, as informed as any journalism, and delivered with firmness and urgency * The Times *
A crackling good yarn...Graham Greene meets Gabriel García Márquez * Evening Standard *
Almost steams with the author's understanding of South America and yet is somehow poetic and tender * Observer *
Will count among the best work being produced by the present generation of British writers * Independent on Sunday *
Truth is certainly stranger than fiction, but the fictionalised facts of The Dancer Upstairs make the story of the Shining Path illuminating reading * Sunday Telegraph *
Shakespeare is a good writer and a clever and ingenious storyteller...this is as good a book as we are likely to get about the atmosphere of the Sendero years * Times Literary Supplement *
Nicholas Shakespeare, using only black marks on white papers, has set in 1990s South America a story quite as evilly enchanting as the one about the Third Man Graham Green set in Vienna... Shakespeare's unadorned prose is as clean and precise as the coroner's scalpel. The Dancer Upstairs is an extraordinary story; no grown-up reader should neglect it