2009 has been a great year for Simon Mawer. Rounding the year off in style, his Booker Prize nominated novel The Glass Room has been a hot pick across the national Christmas ‘books of the year’ round-ups.

Here's what we've seen so far…

"I was gripped by Simon Mawer's The Glass Room" - Jeremy Paxman, The Observer (Books of the Year)

"Imagine the house of fiction as a clean, shining transparent box, befouled by some of the nastiest episodes in recent history. A small saga, beautifully conceived and deeply moving." - Peter Conrad, The Observer (Books of the Year)

"exceptional for its resonant complexity, its restraint and the extreme elegance with which Mawer uses a Modern Movement house, Der Glasraum, as a metaphor for love, desire and memory." - Jane Shilling, Daily Telegraph (Books of the Year)

"a powerful novel about what war does to places and ideas as well as people, with the exceptional evocations of the gleaming Modernist building at its heart" - Rachel Cooke, Evening Standard (Books of the Year)

"The Glass Room by Simon Mawer was one of the very cleverest novels of the year, about love and loss and art and war, set largely within the light-filled 'Glasraum' built by a stylish young Czech couple in the 1930s. A genuinely haunting and stunningly crafted piece of fiction." - Alison Roberts, Evening Standard (Books of the Year)

The Glass Room was also selected for the Financial Times Books of the Year by Nell Freudenberger.

For more information on the author of this stunning work of fiction, visit www.simonmawer.com.