"… this retrospective collection … should remind them [US readers] of Déry’s central place in modern Hungarian literature."
- Publishers Weekly,
"Tibor Déry has few equals among writers in Hungarian.... [He] is one of the...masters of that great tradition of European realism that we associated with the name of Thomas Mann, and he deserves our close attention. "
- TLS,
"These are stories of hardship, injustice, cruelty, and hope. All take place in Budapest during and after the Second World War, but, for their keenness of eye and largeness of heart, they belong to a tradition of dramatic storytelling that isn’t confined by period or place. They remind me of Stories by Tolstoy, Checkhov, Verga, Lawrence and Hemingway. Here is one of the outstanding writers of the twentieth century."
- Ben Sonnenberg,
"Tibor Déry was a dissenter, a subversive revolutionary and, in his old age, a jailbird. He was also one of the greatest stylists in the history of Hungarian literature."
- Péter Nádas,