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 Liz Jensen, author of 'War Crimes for the Home', longlisted for the Orange Prize, and 'Ark Baby' , shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Award |
| »Lewis Crofts' poignant debut captures the turbulence, the vividness and the tragedy of Egon Schiele's life with rare skill and empathy.« |
 Jon McGregor, author of 'If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things', winner of 2003 Somerset Maugham Award, and 'So Many Ways to Begin, Booker longlisted in 2006 |
| »Utterly engrossing. I found myself drawn into Schiele's reeling world with its reek of wet paint and sex.« |
 Ruth Atkins, Fiction buyer at Borders UK |
| »Crofts writes with a great sense of time and place in this arresting novel.« |
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»Author Lewis Crofts is incensing browsers with his new work, The Pornographer of Vienna. The fictionalised account of the life of the Austrian expressionist painter Egon Schiele has reproduced a painting of the artist's wife on the cover, with the lady's knickerless regions positioned neatly across the spine.
"Disgusting!" complains one on Waterstones' website. "I would not want my children to see that."
"It's not grotesque - it's art," Crofts tells me. "Children can wander into galleries and see even more explicit pieces. Frankly, it could be a lot worse: I could have chosen a completely undressed piece.« |
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»Crofts knows his subject and brings a wonderful sense of place to the Vienna of the years immediately preceding the Great War...It starts with a bang: a truly memorable opening sentence: While on honeymoon in Trieste, Adolf infected his wife with syphilis.« |
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»A bold reimagining of the short, frenetic life of Egon Schiele, Crofts's debut doesn't shrink from depicting the squalor of his existence and powerfully evokes his uncompromising talent.« |
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| »This book is thoroughly researched, and Schiele's short life and the morals of Austro-Hungarian society are well described. The author is bewitched by his subject's decadence and by the period's historical detail.« |
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»Crofts uses words to recreate the swirling intoxicating effects of Schiele's paintings...one of the summers most interesting reads..« |
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