The Giraffe's Neck - Tapa dura

This is a brilliant novel: precise, relentless, very funny and unexpectedly powerful ... "Remarkable" is too small a word. It is very funny, desperately sad and real, and ultimately, shocking ... Shaun Whiteside's superlative rendition has penetrated close to the very human heart of this novel of ideas and thoughts, observations and emotional pain. Schalansky's novel is both simple and complex. It is rich in dazzling images drawn from the natural world and the wayward logic of biology; an artistry sustains it all with flair and intent ... There is much to praise and to learn from this singular work (Eileen Battersby, Irish Times)

The Giraffe's Neck is a subtle, understated book, tension, emotion and dark humour bubbling under the surface, with a melancholic air of retrospection about it. In terms of atmosphere it's unlike anything else I've read, and I'd recommend it as a meditation on the need or otherwise for a change in one's life (Big Issue)

Just as the world which Inge Lohmark has painstakingly built up around her crumbles, so too does the utopia of a country founded upon a vision that is both rigid and deterministic (La Repubblica, Italy)

Her book is at once a report on the new Germany, an acid reflection on school and adolescence, the portrait of a woman and a study of concrete cases illustrating the eternal "struggle for life" according to Darwin (Libération, France)

Schalansky writes her way into current European literature with this little pearl of a novel (Berlingske Tidende, Denmark)

Sublime . A beautifully quirky novel, genuinely recommended

(Trouwe, Holland)

Schalansky's short, choppy sentences, expertly translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside, add to the sense of Lohmark trying to keep control of a changing world around her and her place within it ... The story is also, entertainingly, a biology lesson - Lohmark's thoughts and school classes are packed with information on evolution and nature, and are illustrated too. Schalansky's use of the evolution of the giraffe's neck as an analogy for the human condition is inspired. An unusual, distinctive novel that informs as well as entertains (Independent)

Beyond the agony, Mike Leigh-style, there's deep, dark laughter here (Independent)