"All About H. Hatterr" broke publicity records for a book published that year ("Writer", London). The tone of the reviewers was of surprise and awe ("Newsweek", 1951). In the United States, too, Hatterr earned high critical acclaim. Orville Prescott, in his Book of the Week review, in "The New York Times", said of it, "... To describe a rainbow to a child born blind would not be much more difficult than to describe the unique character of "All About H. Hatterr" ... as startling as a unicorn in the hall bedroom. Reading it issues dizzy spells, spots before the eyes, consternation, and even thought." Saul Bellow, also in "The New York Times", chose it for his 1952 Book of the Year selection, (calling it) the book "I love". Decades later Salman Rushdie wrote that "Hatterr's dazzling, puzzling, leaping prose is the first genuine effort to go beyond the Englishness of the English language."