More reviews of the new books

'Titus Awakes is a treasure salvaged from the ruins' New Statesman

'Peake does not, as some have said, defy classification; rather, he is beyond classification in any single genre, and therein perhaps lies his genius. In his centenary year it is to be hoped that the latest surge of interest in his enormous range of work will finally help to place him in his rightful position as one of Britain's most brilliant, original and creative figures' Times Literary Supplement

'A century after his birth, the gothic surrealism of Peake's fantasy world still attracts new fans. With more than 100 of his drawings, this splendid anniversary edition will entice even more into the towers, cellars and corridors of his blackly comic castle.'

'Gormenghast's unreality in terms of an outside world is beside the point. For the reader, as for Peake himself, its reality is in the imagination and as the story gathers speed and force, as the author grows more confident in his audacious set-piece inventions--... the reader too becomes an entranced inhabitant of Gormenghast... The energy and relish of the telling, the excitement of the passages of action, the developing imagination and expressive power of the storyteller make it, like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a spellbinder.' John Spurling in The Spectator.

A tour de force that ranks as one of the twentieth century's most remarkable feats of imaginative writing.