“This is a tale of women suffering under harsh Islamic rule, but it could be about women anywhere there is cruelty and bullying. This novel is unlike any other I have read, more like a poem or a lamenting ballad, with something hypnotic about it, with its rhythmic, keening language, returning again and again to the same incident, a woman killed in the name of religion by the men who have used her. This is a wonderful book and I hope a great many people will read it.” – Doris Lessing

“A study of the psychology of power that goes far beyond slogans.” – Books 

“Comparable to Marquez’s The Autumn of the Patriarch for the way in which it finds vital metaphors to describe religions and political brutality, this is also a work which dares all in order to get important things said.” – Literary Review

 “Clear and impassioned.” – Times Literary Supplement 

“Brilliant…technically inventive, thematically stunning.” – City Limits

“Calls to mind the fundamentalist country of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale… an intense and vivid book.” – Hilary Mantel, Daily Telegraph