Norman Lewis has received high praise from many prominent literary figures. In The Observer (London) Anthony Burgess called him "the doyen of English travel writers." After reading The Changing Sky: Travels of a Novelist (1959) V. S. Pritchett proclaimed in The New Statesman (11 July 1959): "I have never travelled in my armchair so fast, variously and well." Reviewing Golden Earth: Travels in Burma (1952) in The Sunday Times (London) on 3 September 1952, Cyril Connolly exclaimed, "Mr. Lewis can make even a lorry interesting." Eric Newby, reviewing The Honoured Society: The Mafia Conspiracy Observed (1964) in The Observer, said that Lewis is "one of the great travel writers of our time"; Graham Greene, reviewing The Missionaries (1988) in The Daily Telegraph (London), called him "one of the best writers not of any particular decade, but of our century"; Auberon Waugh, topping them all in his review of Golden Earth in Business Traveller, wrote: "Norman Lewis...