Beloved

‘[Toni Morrison’s] irreverence was godly’

Guardian

'Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours... Beloved is a heartbreaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all'

Margaret Atwood

‘I adored her honesty. I admired the way she occupied her space in the world. I believed her’

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

‘[Toni Morrison] led and we followed, and she showed us the beauty of the language, and the power that was unleashed when that beauty was allied to a great heart and a ferocious mind’

Salman Rushdie

‘No other writer in my lifetime, or perhaps ever, has married so completely an understanding of the structures of power with knowledge of the human heart’

Kamila Shamsie

‘Toni Morrison is the greatest chronicler of the American experience that we have ever known’

Tayari Jones

‘Morrison is, to me, the best writer the English-speaking world has ever seen’

Danez Smith

‘Morrison’s legacy in commemorating slavery’s survivors will endure and uplift for centuries to come'

Aminatta Forna

‘Her every word a caress, her every sentence an embrace, her every paragraph, a cupping of her hands around our faces that said: I know you, I see you, we are together’

Jesmyn Ward

‘I have never read anyone else like her . . . She was an opener of doors, doors that seemed they might always be shut, doors shut so tight they seemed not to be doors at all’

Mohsin Hamid

‘Her legacy is total excellence . . . she is magnificent, her emotional intelligence is second to none and her bravery was equal to her artistry’

Kwame Kwei-Armah

‘Morrison almost single-handedly took American fiction forward in the second half of the twentieth century’

Caryl Phillips

A beautiful book and it's beautifully written

Kit de Waal, Good Housekeeping UK

My favourite book of all time

Sareeta Domingo, Good Housekeeping

Morrison's stunning trilogy is an evocation of black life over the past four centuries. It defies summary. Completed almost 25 years ago, these novels top anything produced by any American writer including Hemingway, Updike and DeLillo

Trevor Phillips, Sunday Times

[A] beautiful, haunting novel

Stig Abell, Sunday Times

More than one of Morrison's books could be classed as masterpieces, but this one is famous for a reason: everyone should read it

Bernice McFadden, author of SUGAR, Guardian