The Spring of Kasper Meier

The finest thing in the novel is the imaginative recreation of time and place, the bombed and ruined city over which the past hangs darkly, where no possible future can yet be envisaged … A decidedly accomplished first novel … where the keenness of observation and the rhythms of the prose call Graham Greene to mind - Scotsman

The plot is tight, but it’s the unflinching depiction of a desperate world in post-war Berlin, conveyed in beautiful prose, that makes this thriller so powerful - Sunday Mirror

Ben Fergusson’s The Spring of Kasper Meier is a truly outstanding work of fiction that will, I hope enter into the canon of English literature. It takes the known tragedies of the Second World War and extends them into what was, for most of the judges, an unknown arena: Berlin in the immediate aftermath of war, when the city was in ruins and the rubble gangs foraged for survival. The reality of it, the horror, was visceral and yet told with an immense and compassionate beauty. It’s a masterpiece. To have written it as a first novel is an exceptional achievement - Manda Scott

A formidable first novel. I loved it. - The Sun

Fergusson’s debut portrays the desperation of Berlin and its people at a time when a murder could go unnoticed - Sunday Express

A gripping mystery set in a surreal and terrifying post-war Berlin where nothing is quite what it seems. I loved it.

What I loved about this book were two things above all: firstly, a moment in time and place - devastated post-war Berlin - in which things were done that one knew nothing about, and were shocking. Secondly, he brought Kasper and Eva and the others’ experience to pungent physical life with his sensual description of sight, sound and above all smell. A great achievement and a tremendous debut.

A powerful evocation of shattered lives trying to reconnect - and a heartbreaking story of the pain of compassion.