Reviews
De Waal's book on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict was generally well received. According to Foreign Affairs journal review of Black Garden, de Waal "offers a deeper and more compelling account of the conflict than anyone before.... one likely to exercise give-no-quarters partisans on both sides." Transitions online analyst Richard Allen Greene added: "This book will undoubtedly infuriate partisans on both sides of the conflict. But for anyone who wants a thorough, sympathetic, readable, and fair account, it provides an essential introduction to a war that has left two countries in what De Waal aptly calls 'a kind of slow suicide pact.'"
Time magazine reviewer Paul Quinn-Judge called Black Garden a "brilliant book," and added further that "De Waal's book will infuriate blind partisans on both sides, but for anyone who truly wants to understand what happened in this part of the Caucasus, it will not be surpassed for many years. He is cautious, meticulous and even-handed, and the breadth of his research is remarkable".
Parameters journal review states: "Thomas de Waal, noted British journalist and specialist on the Caucasus, has ... a book that is both a poignant chronicle and a lucid, evenhanded analysis of the intricacies of this conflict". Neal Ascherson in his review of Black Garden in The New York Review of Books refers to de Waal as "a wise and patient reporter", and the book as "admirable and rigorous".
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