Reception
Edward Rothstein in a review in The New York Times describes The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire as "a satirical romp through rhetoric in a foreign empire", but complains that the tone of the book "wavers uncertainly, mixing farce, cynicism and banal religiosity."
In another New York Times review, Michiko Kakutani writes that in this book Lessing has "narrowed her cosmic focus to a specific issue, namely the manipulative use of language and words" which, she believes, was handled with "more acerbity and more humour" by George Orwell in Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
Read more about this topic: The Sentimental Agents In The Volyen Empire
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)