Havoc in Its Third Year - Hardcover

'As uncompromising as a biblical text, Bennett's drama captures life in the raw - both in the dock and the chamber. A modern parable in historic guise' Independent, 24/6/05 (Independent)

'Ronan Bennett's novel is a little gem, as perfectly constructed as it is forcefully delivered... The period detail is thrillingly good' Sunday Telegraph, 10/7/05 (Sunday Telegraph)

This is a gripping novel, its narrative staggered with betrayal and intrigue and suffused with the hot threat of violence. Bennett's prose is economical, powerful, and often poetic (The Times)

No one today writes with such sombre clarity of divided loyalties and shifting political allegiances... Bennett beautifully conjures a sense of holiness... he is marvellous, too, at drawing vivid images from common life... There isn't a bogus sentence in the book (Ian Thomson, Spectator)

Bennett's evocation of a corner of England on the edge of apocalypse is wonderfully done... the novel's language is flowing yet exact, marked with a wonderful strangeness (Kathryn Hughes, Guardian)

An accomplished and ambitious work of fiction... HAVOC is Bennett's best novel to date, and deserves a significant place in the modern canon (Observer)

[Bennett] is a supremely stylish writer... His characters rise empathetic and irresistible from the pages (Sunday Herald)

[His] writing is always profoundly informed by politics and belief... conjures up a bleak and brutal world, but sets against it delicate details of human feeling and perception... [Bennett] has a great deal to tell us, and he does it with skill, beauty and human sympathy (FT Magazine)

Superb... already long-listed for the Booker, HAVOC, IN ITS THIRD YEAR has the pedigree of a novel that can, and should, go further. It is a thrillingly satisfying piece of work (Sunday Telegraph)

Both an atmospheric thriller and a consternating study of the horrors of fundamentalism... grim, compelling and ultimately bracing reading (Irish Independent)

'With Greene gone, and Richard Ford last spotted in suburbia, we need writers like Ronan Bennett' Nick Hornby

From the bestselling, whitbread-shortlisted author of 'The Catastrophist', a dark historical thriller akin to 'The Name of the Rose'; murder, politics of religion and mob rule stalk England in this extraordinary new novel.