City on Fire

Extraordinary…dazzling… a sprawling, generous, warm-hearted epic of 1970s New York * Observer *
Staggering…gloriously ambitious * Independent on Sunday *
Exciting, imaginative and perfectly paced * Daily Telegraph *
You’re soon zipping through Hallberg’s vividly realised New York like a child discovering Hogwarts for the first time * The Times *
This book felt to me like a DVD boxset, in that each chapter was so short that I’d find myself reading just one more, just one more, and then find myself still reading an hour later. I love this book: this is definitely for me the best book we’ve done on the Book Club this year. * Simon Mayo Radio 2 Book Club *
Once I started Hallberg's addictive soap opera shuttling between uptown and downtown Manhattan, I couldn't stop ... This is The Goldfinch with a safety pin through its beak. -- James Kidd * Independent *
A tour de force * Daily Mail *
There is prose in City on Fire as transporting as any you’re likely to see in a book in the next 10 years * Guardian *
City on Fire is an extraordinary performance. Radiating youthful bravado that will make older authors sniff with contempt (or sweat with envy), Hallberg has conjured what he calls the “muchness” of New York City in the late 1970s … A novel whose Whitmanesque arms embrace an entire city of lovers and strivers, saints and killers … Dazzling -- Ron Charles * Washington Post *