In the U.S.:

"In this elegantly structured debut novel...in lively, straightforward prose, Dovey gets to the heart of the complicit nature of the master-servant relationship, in which 'power and desire couple effortlessly.'" - The New Yorker, March 10, 2008 Link to full text

"More ambitious and more immediate than a fable, a story about how the slightest taste of power so easily stimulates our limitless appetite for sadism. Dovey's ultimate lesson, that nature and mankind abhor a power vacuum, may be a bleak one, but she presents her case so meticulously and relentlessly that you've got to respect her authority." - New York Times Sunday Book Review, April 6, 2008 Link to full review

Editors' Choice, New York Times Sunday Book Review (April 13, 2008) Link to full review

"Late 20th century English-language literature is rich in works of political implication that capture what might be called the aesthetics of betrayal...Dovey has extended this genre in an important way by exploring the eros of complicity. Every tyrant's accomplice partakes of it, as every act of collaboration is simultaneously one of seduction and submission...One of the things that makes Dovey's impressive novel so ruthlessly unsentimental is her implicit insistence that conscience is the illumination that every tyrant must fear -- and her explicit demonstration of just how casually that light is everywhere extinguished."
- LA Times, February 2008 Link to full review

Blood Kin in "Newly Released Fiction Reviewed,"
- New York Times (March, 2008) Link to full story

"In this stripped-down Kafkaesque fable, which takes place in an unnamed country at an unspecified time, Dovey infuses each character with humanity, and brilliantly reveals how banal acts like cooking and shaving can become charged with longing and political intent."
- Vogue (USA), March 2008 Link to PDF

"A compact but ambitious fable…Dovey displays a mastery over her material and the pacing of her narrative worthy of a much more experienced writer." — Elle Magazine, March 2008

"Dovey's surgical prose and cool apprehension of the machinations of ambition and lust make her a writer to watch." - O Magazine, March 2008

"As coolly sensual as newly laundered linen and as raw as a fresh injury. The reader is both voyeur and invited witness. -Nylon, March 2008

"Dovey's novel is refreshingly spiky and precise, its insights startling and original."
- Entertainment Weekly, March 2008

"A dense, dark, impressively controlled first work." - Kirkus Reviews, January 2008

"A lovely, haunting novel, written with great care and precision…a really fine debut."
- Colum McCann

"Dovey's debut is eloquent, subversive, and likely the beginning of an illustrious literary career."
- Booklist

"Her splendid debut novel...Blood Kin is a story about power, personal and political, and its dangerous ineffability."
- Bookforum Link to PDF

"Dovey’s smart debut novel traces events in the lives of three functionaries in the entourage of the president of an unnamed country who is overthrown…Dovey’s prose gives the events an air of magic and allows this small, fable-like story to plainly illustrate the old axiom about power’s ability to corrupt."
– Publishers Weekly, 10/8/2007

In the U.K.:

"This is an unflinching and poignant work that exposes our limitations and vulnerabilities in the face of absolute power. It has about it something of the splendour and inevitability of a myth. Like all wonderful books, it has always been there, waiting for its author to arrive. And, thankfully for us, she has come."
– Hisham Matar

"Exceptional…An icy, elegant study of power and its horribly fascinating perversions."
– Christopher Hope

"Ceridwen Dovey’s mesmerizing novel lifts the lid on a dictatorship and its perilous aftermath…There is a hypnotic, languorous feel to the writing – even as the conclusion circles with the impatience of vultures over carrion."
– The Guardian Link to full review

"The trauma of physical violence is kept off stage whilst Dovey strategically deploys snapshots of family heritage. The effect is tense and dramatic, as though the claustrophobic pressures of a country house murder mystery, in which all are implicated by motive or connection, had been transplanted on to the political instability of Garcia Marquez’s revolutionary landscapes. Dovey draws strong, vivid characters and her keen eye for signposting detail…gives a sensual counterpoint to the ruthless logic of her subtly heralded denouement."
– The Independent Link to full review

"An Orwellian fable that is as masterful as it is entertaining. A noteable debut, perfectly formed."
– Sunday Business Post (Ireland) Link to full review

"An excellently sculpted indictment of avarice, lust and human misery."
– Glasgow Herald

"It reads like a clean, spare translation of something from an entirely different tradition: the modern ghost stories of Taichi Yamada, for example. This is startling, quality material, unique and unpredictable: even forewarned by the heavyweight cover endorsements, there is a palpable sense of ground being broken."
– The Irish Examiner

"Dovey…makes good points about self-delusion, the gradual surrender to corruption and the willful blindness that helps survival…Nobody is exempt, of course – the web of hidden connections is skillfully described."
-The Times

"The prose is sensuous and restrained, the gaze piercing and relentless. Dovey exposes not only the arrogance of power, but also the human heart’s dark adoration of the powerful."
– Hisham Matar in The Observer Link to full review

In South Africa:

"One of the most remarkable first novels I have read in years…startlingly tough and lyrical."
– Mail & Guardian Link to full review

"This fabulist tour de force marks Ceridwen Dovey’s astonishing debut. I doubt that any southern African writer has delved into the functioning of power with as much intensity and insight since the masterly reflections of Bessie Head and JM Coetzee; Dovey’s is a potent new voice on the southern African literary scene…I strongly recommend this highly accomplished, beautifully-tuned prose, with its ripples of restrained violence coursing across the surface."
– LitNet Link to full review

"Dovey’s writing is clear, fluid and supple. There are echoes of JM Coetzee and Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the muffled brutality and the infinite sense of time. The uniformity of the voices and the tight rhythm of the chapters create the sense of a classical chorus commenting on the bloody and uncontrollable."
– The Sunday Times

"Ceridwen Dovey is part of a growing band of young writers who are making their mark on the literary scene."
– The Weekender

In Australia:

"A terrific debut novel…a meticulously constructed story about political corruption and its impact on people’s lives…artfully bleak and ingenious."
– The Sydney Morning Herald Link to the PDF