A single reading of Visitants … is sufficient to ensure that there has been no weakening of Stow's creative talent; neither has there been any significant departure from his basic preoccupation with the essential misery of the human condition. We have only to look at the title of this new novel to see that the author is as concerned with the plight of the sensitive outsider as he was more than twenty years ago when he wrote his first two published novels. (p. 73)

Visitants marks a refreshing departure from the technique of some of the earlier novels where one was all too often aware of being dictated at, of being bombarded with statements of offensively glaring significance…. The new technique, the beautifully adept alternation of styles and attitudes, the smooth interweaving of native and Europeanised speech, all add up to a piece of work that is flexible and fluid...