The Blind Man of Seville

Praise for The Blind Man of Seville

‘Robert Wilson’s fiction grows darker, deeper, more adamantly original. His seventh novel — nominally a thriller — turns the format inside out, extending its reach, tuning up the language, reinventing its anatomy. It is crime writing at its very best, but it is also something more. It observes no limits, it begs no pardon. It excites, it surprises and it satisfies. High praise but Wilson really is this good’

PHILIP OAKES, Literary Review

‘A big, highly entertaining and thought-provoking book, dealing as it does with themes of obsession, dysfunctional families, paranoia, the thirst for vengeance and insanity. The exotic setting, the true-to-life characters, the psychological perceptions and the interpolated journals of the father impart depth and breadth to a narrative that is as multi-faceted as Restoration drama’

VINCENT BANVILLE, Irish Times

‘The Blind Man of Seville is an ingenious and compelling thriller. It covers some unusual ground: the nature of artistic genius, for example, and the price of happiness. But while the investigation is convincing enough, it is Falcón Sr’s diaries that are the real gem. They are full of drama and confession — like Alan Clark’s, but with paintbrushes, firearms and catamites’

TOBY CLEMENTS, Daily Telegraph

‘Finely written picture of Seville and a moody Jefé of police, Javier Falcon: a character evoked with some brilliant passages. The story of his family is intimately bound up with events. Interwoven with the modern narrative are fascinating digressions into the Spanish past. This is a work that ambitiously seeks to investigate Spanish history through its characters’

JANE JAKEMAN, Independent

‘As an evocation of the emotional labyrinth of postwar Tangiers and as a tale of artistic drift, it’s rather brilliant — a detective story Paul Bowles never wrote’

CHRIS PETIT, Guardian

‘A fascinating, harrowing and moving account of a man facing the most heartbreaking truths about his life. A consummate writer who uses a broad canvas to explore many mysteries and delivers a magnificent and riveting story’

CATH STAINCLIFFE, Manchester Evening News

‘Admirably paced and enthrallingly elaborate’

JOHN DUGDALE, Sunday Times

‘It is a book that exists on multiple levels, kicking off as an off-key detective story and ending up as (among other things) a tense psychological thriller and a literary investigation into perception and family loyalties. A wonderful, if dark and disturbing, literary detective novel’

MARTIN RADCLIFFE, Time Out

‘The momentum never flags as the clues mount up and Falcón begins to realize where they are leading. It’s an intriguing story and Mr Wilson handles its complexities superbly’

SUSANNA YAGER, Sunday Telegraph

‘This is powerful evocative stuff’

PETER GUTTRIDGE, Observer

‘A splendid assembly of complexities and relationships that tangle generations in murder and scandal … Wilson has a talent for digging beneath the skin to explore psychological and emotional nuances’

New York Daily News

‘Cruel, mesmerizing, and wonderfully intelligent’

Kirkus Reviews