Selected by The Economist as one of the Best Books of the Year 2012
Selected by Library Journal as one of the Year's Best Books 2012
Year's Best Books Chosen by Writers, selected by Lionel Shriver, The Guardian 2012
“The prose of The Forgiven has a very particular, knowing luminosity, much like the tarnished world it describes. A beautiful, compelling book to savor line by line.”
— Nikita Lalwani, author of Gifted
"A sinister and streamlined entertainment...this is a lean book that moves like a panther. Even better, Mr. Osborne has a keen and sometimes cruel eye for humans and their manners and morals, and for the natural world. You can open to almost any page and find brutally fine observations...this is a writer whose pilot light is always on." - Dwight Garner,The New York Times Book Review
“‘'The Forgiven' shines darkly with a rich and mordant fatalism. Obsorne's characters emerge like people in a dream -- diamond-sharp but fascinatingly askew. His prose is gorgeous and precise; the story slices keenly through the exotic haze of its setting. It's an absolutely brilliant novel.”
— Kate Christensen, author of The Epicure's Lament and The Astral
“No mere imitation but a contribution to the shelf on which The Sheltering Sky and The Bonfire of the Vanities also sit, The Forgiven explores the clash of two cultures, each of which feels superior to the other. Osborne's writing is uncomfortably well observed; his story is sickeningly, addictively headlong.” - Lionel Shriver
"A perfect storm of a novel" - The Fredericksburg Star
“Extraordinarily acute to human nature...Stylishness holds the book together, and makes all the bits of plot machinery feel new again...a book filled with lovely scenes. There are enough ways to read the book that one finishes it and immediately wants to start it again.” - Akhil Sharma in Newsweek
“A brilliant, unsentimental rendering of contemporary East-West conflict and the imperfect human psyche….Osborne has done an extraordinary job of capturing moral complexity, never letting his characters or his readers off easy. The result should be grim reading, but instead it’s vivifying. Highly recommended.” - Library Journal, starred review
"In the 'Clash of Civilizations', political scientist Samuel P. Huntington predicted that cultural and religious identities would be the main source of conflict in the 21st century. It is precisely these ideological differences between the East and West that echo through Lawrence Osborne’s sublime new book, 'The Forgiven.' Like Graham Greene and Oscar Wilde, Osborne explores ambivalent themes of morality and privilege. The Forgiven is as much about imperialism as it is about deteriorating relationships and atonement... the conclusion can best be described as shattering. Osborne’s previous work of fiction Ania Malina came out over 20 years ago. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait another two decades for the next one" - Leher Kala in Indian Express
"Lawrence Osborne's 'The Forgiven' is an elegant, seductive novel that slyly exposes the assumptions blithely made and abruptly overturned when privilege and poverty collide. Throughout the novel, this writer, who has been understandably compared with Waugh and Greene, restlessly adjusts our perspective, allowing us to see through the eyes of the Hennigers, their hosts, the servants, and the desert dwellers as this morality tale plays out, and as the desert itself seems to reassert its presence. Osborne also gives the dead man, Driss, a life and a story of his own, one that intersects with the lives of the Hennigers not once but twice in the novel's shocking, perfect ending...it's a drama that unfolds with the relentlessness of an ancient myth and the intensity of a psychological thriller." - the Barnes and Noble Review
"'The Forgiven' is a lean elegant work reminiscent of Fitzgerald in its ability to set the mood and of Paul Bowles’ 'The Sheltering Sky' for the way it captures both the beauty and desolation of the desert. This is not to say it is a derivative work, for Osborne’s voice is his own and he builds this tale so well...The book is marvelously constructed and, like the desert and its people, remains enigmatic right up until the last page" - The Gilmore Guide to Books
"Violence and debauchery in the Moroccan desert lead to cultural misunderstandings...and to more violence and debauchery...A gripping read with moral ambiguity galore" - Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"In Osborne’s brilliant, unsentimental rendering of contemporary East-West conflict and the imperfect human psyche, there’s a lot to forgive and no easy wrap-up. Novelist and travel writer Osborne has done an extraordinary job of capturing moral complexity, never letting his characters or his readers off easy. The result should be grim reading, but instead it’s vivifying. Highly recommended." - Library Journal, starred review
"Osborne portrays the vacuity of high society as gorgeously and incisively as he does the unease of cultures thrust together in the unforgiving desert" - Publisher's Weekly, starred review
"In his elegant and incisive first novel, travel-journalist Osborne hauntingly captures this exposed essence in all its inscrutable mystery and dispassionate brutishness." -Carol Haggas, Booklist
"As he digs deeper, Osborne exposes the many conflicts underlying the various relationships he describes. Betrayals of religion, culture, family and particularly money – what people with money may do, what other people must do for money – are brought to life with subtlety and savagery.The heat, the desert landscape, and each side’s complete obliviousness to the other’s point of view make 'The Forgiven' a fascinating and thought-provoking novel." - Alexandra Bowie, The Brooklyn Bugle
"Although one emerges from this strange and complex novel as if from a dream, a little reflection makes it clear that our dreams can easily become nightmares.Written in beautifully nuanced prose complete with vivid descriptions of place...A quiet unease hangs over the action, reinforcing the notion of Western arrogance in a world full of life and death but also rich in ruined emotional fragments. Reminiscent of Paul Bowles, the real setting of 'The Forgiven' is not the vast, uncharted Moroccan desert but the vast, uncharted reaches of the human heart" - Curled Up With a Good Book
"Osborne’s writing is well observed and tightly controlled. The narrative preceding the scene where David hits and kills the boy is perfectly paced, building the sense of approaching doom until the reader can hardly bear the tension. When it finally happens, however, the sense of foreboding isn’t relieved, but increased further and we see the future for David and Jo mapped out already...Osborne excels in his precise use of language. Every word works hard as it shifts the reader’s perspective between the characters. In a lesser writer’s hands this constant shift of point of view would make for an uneasy read, but Osborne is a gifted writer able to guide his readers seamlessly through the heads of his many characters with the use of a single word that tells us all we need to know about the character whose eyes we are seeing the events through. As the perspective shifts between the characters and their prejudices, the reader is forced to make their own judgment on the events. This novel is no easy ride, but it’s fast and exhilarating and constantly worth the effort needed to keep up with the characters...This is the work of a man whose eye is always observing, always seeing, hearing, smelling every detail of the world around him and the result is evocative prose carrying the reader into the minutiae of Osborne’s creation. The ending is sharp, unexpected and inevitable and brings together the themes of forgiveness and retribution that permeate the story: the work of a writer in full control of his story and plot. The Forgiven is a wonderful book that explores human morality, set against a harsh and unforgiving background, skilfully and beautifully evoked with precise prose." - Julie Fisher, Bookmunch
"Like any desert trip, Lawrence Osborne's The Forgiven is alarming and liberating in equal measure. Here is a tale as hot, claustrophobic and gritty as being rolled in the sand after a sweat bath. But it's also a novel with a vast moral horizon, which recedes and advances disorientatingly, leaving the reader with a thrilling sense of vertigo. Written with an untimely elegance more 1930s than 2010s, the book proceeds at thriller pace or, at least, it would if almost every page didn't cause you to fixate on a clinical insight into human nature or a snatch of dream-like description...A number of people have compared Osborne to Evelyn Waugh: this is the Waugh of A Handful of Dust, who understands how flimsy the veneer of civilisation can be. However, with the arrival of the dead man's father, Abdellah The Forgiven subtly shifts into another gear...As unsettling, mysterious and ambiguous as the demonically beautiful trilobite fossils that permeate its pages, The Forgiven presents a compelling riddle of the sands." - Adrian Turpin, The Literary Review
"A master of the high style" - Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian
"Osborne writes mercilessly, savagely well. He excavates his characters, and the centuries-long cultural rift between the desert people and the Western infidels with a pathologist’s precision, wrapping fear, boredom, forgiveness, judgment, honour and sexual attraction into a novel that plunges with sinister pace towards its denouement." - Victoria Moore, The Daily Mail
"Brooding, compelling...There’s a strong, almost old-fashioned moral force at work in Osborne’s novel (only his second, following his 1986 debut about a wartime love affair), as can be gleaned from the book’s very title. One of the most appealing aspects of Osborne’s novel is the way in which, from this gripping starting point, he begins to wrongfoot the reader. He introduces, for instance, not only Abdellah’s narrated point of view, but that of the dead man, Driss, revealing the circumstances that led to his being on the roadside where he was knocked over. At Richard’s house party, meanwhile, the atmosphere of febrile over-indulgence seems to forebode some possible coming calamity. At the novel’s dramatic close, you could accuse Osborne of forcing the hand of moral come-uppance just a little too much — but it barely detracts from the tension he has maintained throughout the novel, and the pleasure of his bringing under such scrutiny the unpredictable behaviour of his morally tortuous characters." - Robert Collins, The London Sunday Times
