<b>Astoundingly good</b>... This dramatic, moving story <b>demands you put your life on hold until it is finished</b>
Guardian
Shakespeare is interested in grand themes: love, vocation, politics and the corrupting power of moral and ideological absolutes... <b><i>The Dancer Upstairs</i> will be enjoyed by any kind of reader... It is enviably good</b>, 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... <b>I was riveted by this superb novel</b>
New Statesman
As <b>cracking </b>a story as any yarn, as informed as any journalism, and <b>delivered with firmness and urgency</b>
The Times
A <b>crackling good</b> yarn...<b>Graham Greene meets Gabriel García Márquez</b>
Evening Standard
Almost steams with the author's understanding of South America and yet is somehow <b>poetic and tender</b>
Observer
<b>Will count among the best work being produced by the present generation of British writers</b>
Independent on Sunday
Truth is certainly stranger than fiction, but the fictionalised facts of <i>The Dancer Upstairs </i>make the story of the Shining Path <b>illuminating reading</b>
Sunday Telegraph
Shakespeare is a good writer and <b>a clever and ingenious storyteller</b>...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, <b>has set in 1990s South America a story quite as evilly enchanting as the one about the Third Man Graham Green set in Vienna</b>... Shakespeare's unadorned prose is as clean and precise as the coroner's scalpel. <i>The Dancer Upstairs </i>is an <b>extraordinary </b>story; no grown-up reader should neglect it
From the acclaimed author of The Sandpit, an exhilarating literary thriller about the hunt for a missing terrorist in South America.
Out of a job but in search of one last scoop from South America, journalist John Dyer strikes gold when he chances upon Agustín Rejas, a former police colonel whose dogged pursuit - and eventual capture - of murderous guerrilla leader Ezequiel made him a national hero.
Over many nights, Rejas recounts his story of the years-long manhunt. So too emerges the tale of his own poor upbringing, his turbulent marriage and the passion he once felt for Yolanda, his daughter's ballet teacher - an all-consuming obsession that would ultimately lead him straight to the elusive Ezequiel...
'Astoundingly good... Demands you put your life on hold until it is finished' Guardian
'A genuinely fine novel from a writer who possesses real heart and flair' Louis de Bernières, Sunday Times