No. 4 Imperial Lane

"Stunning...an epic and exotic drama about the rise and fall of nations and the ebb and flow of love."

"[A] captivating story."

"Weisman's prose is clear and evocative with plenty of detail but no unnecessary flourishes. A fresh, enlightening book, complex, emotionally resonant."

"Starts out with sharply attentive writing about a young American's life in Thatcher's England but opens up to embrace colonial African history."

"A powerful elegy for lost love and lost empire...seductive...graceful...remarkable... elegant...engaging, leavened with tenderness and gallows humor.... [A] captivating story...a braided exploration of a woman's ordeal and an empire's decline...a story both intimate and transnational...a tragedy of rare power and richness.... If lately you've been shuffling through too many novels that feel a little unambitious, vaguely sentimental, even adolescent, 'No. 4 Imperial Lane' could give your summer reading some real depth."

"The marriage of history and fiction doesn't always work. But when it does, the result can be splendid. Case in point, this novel..... It's one thing to situate fictional characters in recognizable historical contexts. It's another to bring those contexts as alive as Weisman has.... [P]art literary novel, part historical fiction and part thriller [with] all parts mesh[ing] quite nicely."

"[R]edemptive and utterly transporting...an epic family story, reminiscent of Nick Hornby and Allan Hollinghurst...a singular debut."

"[A]mbitious and dazzling...a coming of age story that brings to life late '80s England."

"Few writers are able to bring together the counter-cultural buzz and familial upheaval of the Thatcherite era as well as Jonathan Weisman.... [I]mmersive and engaging...a wholly edifying experience...historically complex and contextually rich.... There is no way to get bored reading this book."

"[Weisman's] evocation of the friendship that develops between Hans and David is all but flawless, a complicated and resonantly moving thing.... It's the story of this friendship that makes the novel's concluding act veritably glow with conviction, and it's that concluding act that will stick with readers long after they've closed the book."

"Weisman's vivid characters and graceful detours through history will sneak inside your head. Sophisticated and multilayered, NO. 4 IMPERIAL LANE succeeds in being both charming and haunting."

"Jonathan Weisman's prose is thrilling, visceral. It grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go. A brilliant debut."

"A dazzling debut, full of generous heart and insightful detail into England at the end of the '80s. I could not put this one down!"

"Reads like a classic Elvis Costello record sounds: prickly, smart, helplessly romantic, historically engaged, and funny as hell. Imagine Nick Hornby writing The English Patient, and then add mohawks. What a sensational debut."

"Like the plays of Shakespeare, whose lines float through these pages, Weisman's debut novel is full of love, ambition, scheming, and family dysfunction."

"There is such joy, curiosity, and appetite for the world in evidence here. The insights into the complexities of human experience are breathtaking, and will linger long in your memory."