E-raamat: Complete Short Stories

Narrative addicts all have writers to whom they return regularly to cheer or console themselves. Mine are Georgette Heyer, C.S. Forester, Margery Allingham and Dick Francis. I have just discovered another, Patrick OBrian, and he is in many ways better and more satisfying than any of them. A.S. BYATT, EVENING STANDARD



Young writers ought, before lurching into print, to be obliged to learn by heart at least one of Patrick OBrians short stories . . . OBrian writes like a man to whom writing comes as easily as breathing: precisely, fluently, economically . . . perfect cadences. JANE SHILLING, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH



A Kafka in the countryside . . . OBrians accounts of travelling have the clarity of the best descriptive writing . . . The astonishing achievement of these short stories is not just the authors truth to the landscape, but his pitiless vision of the disintegration of personality when a living creature is struggling in a hostile world. ANTHONY EVERITT, COUNTRY LIFE



He is more than a merely popular writer. He is a very, very fine one. CHARLTON HESTON, DAILY TELEGRAPH



It is his ability to develop character, his delightful humour, and the emotion he can evoke, which keep the reader entranced TIMOTHY MO, SPECTATOR



The greatest historical novelist of all time. THE TIMES



There are two types of people in the world: Patrick OBrian fans, and people who havent read him yet. LUCY EYRE, GUARDIAN