Critics Love The Curfew

The latest from Jesse Ball (Samedi the Deafness, The Way Through Doors), The Curfew is a thoughtful novel about a father and a daughter trying to protect each other in a war-torn world. Reviewers have lauded the book’s compassion and imagination; read on for a sampling of some of their praise.

“Ball’s fiction lies at some oscillating coordinate between Kafka and Calvino: swift, intense fables composed of equal parts wonder and dread… astonishes on the page; the reader is puzzled, charmed, then shattered.” —The New Yorker (also selected as a Quick Pick Book!)

“A story both thrilling and satisfyingly original…. The Curfew is reason to take heart: for all the talk about the staleness of the contemporary American novel, here is a young writer unafraid to muddy the waters with a willful experimentalism, and he continues to get better.” —The Daily Beast

“The Curfew demands to be puzzled over. It’s compelling and sly, and it says much with its silences. Ball plays with the idea of what would happen if certain things, like knowledge or music or people, were inexplicably removed, and how those who remained would compensate for those gaps.” —NPR’s “Books We Like”

“The Curfew is a spellbinding and wistful meditation on familial love, sacrifice, the exigency of imagination, and the honoring of those lost. It’s a book that leaves the heart both wrenched and warm.” —The L Magazine

“The most exciting, original and flat out incredible young writer at work today is Jesse Ball…. Once again, Ball has created a familiar yet unsettling world and filled it with interesting, challenging characters…. Ball should be required reading for anyone and everyone trying to make sense of our times. He is playful, puzzling and packs serious intellectual heat. High praise? I dare say I still fail to do him justice.” —Bait for Bookworms

Click here to read an excerpt!