Graham Swift – författare

Now a major film starring Olivia Colman, Colin Firth, Odessa Young and Josh O’Connor (The Crown), scripted by Alice Birch (Normal People)'Exquisite . . . Mothering Sunday shows love, lust and ordinary decency straining against the bars of an unjust English caste system' Kazuo IshiguroIt is March 30th 1924. It is Mothering Sunday.How will Jane Fairchild, orphan and housemaid, occupy her time when she has no mother to visit? How, shaped by the events of this never to be forgotten day, will her future unfold?Beginning with an intimate assignation and opening to embrace decades, Mothering Sunday has at its heart both the story of a life and the life that stories can magically contain. Constantly surprising, joyously sensual and deeply moving, it is Graham Swift at his thrilling best.Praise for Mothering Sunday:‘Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives – the parallel stories – we can never know … It may just be Swift’s best novel yet’ The Observer'Dazzling . . . a vanished world is resurrected with superb immediacy . . . wonderfully accomplished' Sunday Times'Stunning . . . It is about the most perfect novel you could wish to read' The Guardian'From start to finish Swift's is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve . . . Swift is a writer at the very top of his game' Evening StandardFrom the Booker-winning author of Last Orders and Waterland comes a long-awaited new novel. ‘Mothering Sunday is bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly… Swift’s small fiction feels like a masterpiece’ The Guardian‘Mastery and resonance . . . It’s one of the novel’s great strengths to be able to shift with such agility between focus scene and lifetime recollection . . . the languid, blissful minutes of March 30, 1924 seem to contain all the succeeding decades’ Times Literary Supplement 'A dazzling read: sexy, stylish, subversive' Herald Scotland'A jewel of a book, a subtle, erotically charged novella suspended between past and future' Hermione Lee'A work of gold from the subtle pen of the great Graham Swift' Le Monde'With this novel he captures what it means to be alive' Der Spiegel‘An exquisite novella of love and loss . . . a short yet powerful and intricately layered work . . . every sentence counting and not a word out of place’ The Australian

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The remarkable new work of fiction from the Booker Prize-winning author of Last Orders, Waterland and Mothering Sunday'His archly modulated, precise prose, reminiscent at times of his friend Kazuo Ishiguro’s, has lost none of its power ... immensely readable late-career Swift from start to finish, Twelve Post-War Tales is a marvel of the storyteller's art.' Financial Times‘There can surely be no better contemporary writer to take on history’s circularities that Graham Swift. … “Growing up in the 1950s there was all the evidence of war.” Swift has said. This beautiful cluster of stories shows how vital it remains in recollection.’ Observer'Skilful, generous and humane, these 12 tales suggest the complexity and heartbreak of being engaged on such an uncertain journey.' Guardian‘The characters in this collection share their thoughts and memories with the reader as though with a close friend, and the warmth of their confidences balances against their sadness. We feel we’ve been in the trenches with them, even when a story has gone no farther than the living room.’ Wall Street Journal'These stories, depth charges of love, anguish, resentment, each in their way relating to the effects of WW2, are so good. Swift at his best – and he’s on top form here – has the humanity and wry humour of William Trevor’, Patrick Gale'Quite wonderful. Such grace and clarity - I'm filled with admiration', Philip PullmanIn the aftermath of the Second World War Private Joseph Caan, a young Jewish soldier stationed in Germany, seeks the truth about lost family members; in the 1960s a father focuses on his daughter’s wedding even as the Cuban Missile Crisis brings the world to the brink of disaster; in 2001, while planes fly into the Twin Towers, a maid working for US Embassy staff in London wonders if her birth on the day of the Kennedy assassination shaped her life; and at the height of a pandemic lockdown, Dr. Cole, a retired specialist in respiratory disease, returns to work and recalls a formative childhood encounter with illness and much more. These are just a few of the challenged characters we meet in Graham Swift’s Twelve Post-war Tales. Tender, humane, funny and moving, Swift’s latest work of fiction displays his quietly commanding ability to set the personal and the ordinary against the harsh sweep of history. It is an outstanding achievement, confirming his status as one of the great and subtlest voices of our age.

The remarkable new work of fiction from the Booker Prize-winning author of Last Orders, Waterland and Mothering Sunday'His archly modulated, precise prose, reminiscent at times of his friend Kazuo Ishiguro’s, has lost none of its power ... immensely readable late-career Swift from start to finish, Twelve Post-War Tales is a marvel of the storyteller's art.' Financial Times‘There can surely be no better contemporary writer to take on history’s circularities that Graham Swift. … “Growing up in the 1950s there was all the evidence of war.” Swift has said. This beautiful cluster of stories shows how vital it remains in recollection.’ Observer'Skilful, generous and humane, these 12 tales suggest the complexity and heartbreak of being engaged on such an uncertain journey.' Guardian‘The characters in this collection share their thoughts and memories with the reader as though with a close friend, and the warmth of their confidences balances against their sadness. We feel we’ve been in the trenches with them, even when a story has gone no farther than the living room.’ Wall Street Journal'These stories, depth charges of love, anguish, resentment, each in their way relating to the effects of WW2, are so good. Swift at his best – and he’s on top form here – has the humanity and wry humour of William Trevor’, Patrick Gale'Quite wonderful. Such grace and clarity - I'm filled with admiration', Philip PullmanIn the aftermath of the Second World War Private Joseph Caan, a young Jewish soldier stationed in Germany, seeks the truth about lost family members; in the 1960s a father focuses on his daughter’s wedding even as the Cuban Missile Crisis brings the world to the brink of disaster; in 2001, while planes fly into the Twin Towers, a maid working for US Embassy staff in London wonders if her birth on the day of the Kennedy assassination shaped her life; and at the height of a pandemic lockdown, Dr. Cole, a retired specialist in respiratory disease, returns to work and recalls a formative childhood encounter with illness and much more. These are just a few of the challenged characters we meet in Graham Swift’s Twelve Post-war Tales. Tender, humane, funny and moving, Swift’s latest work of fiction displays his quietly commanding ability to set the personal and the ordinary against the harsh sweep of history. It is an outstanding achievement, confirming his status as one of the great and subtlest voices of our age.

One of the subjects of the poems is undoubtedly time, and time is, undoubtedly, one of the subjects of my fiction. Fifty years is quite a serious chunk of time, and I hope this book of poems will stand the test of time, along with all my other books.Best known as a writer of fiction, Graham Swift’s novels have received accolades and awards for over half a century. As well as being one of our greatest novelists, Swift is also a masterful poet. Now, for the first time, a selection of his poems has been collected in a single volume to celebrate his 50 years as a published writer. Like his prose, his poetry is deft, humane and understatedly powerful – a true testament to a lifetime spent in pursuit of literary excellence.

These twenty-five new stories mark Graham Swift's return to the short form after seven acclaimed novels and confirm him as a master storyteller. They unite into a richly peopled vision of a country that is both a crucible of history and a maze of contemporary confusions. Meet Dr Shah who has never been to India and Mrs Kaminski, on her way to Poland via A&E; meet Holly and Polly who have come to their own Anglo-Irish understanding and Lily Hobbs, married to a shirt; Charlie and Don who have seen the docks turn into Docklands; Mr Wilkinson the weirdo next door; Daisy Baker who is terrified of Yorkshire; and Johnny Dewhurst, stranded on Exmoor. Graham Swift steers us effortlessly from the Civil War to the present day, from world-shaking events to the secret dramas lived out in rooms, workplaces, homes. With his remarkable sense of place, he charts an intimate human geography. In doing so he moves us profoundly, but with a constant eye for comedy. Binding these stories together is Swift's grasp of the universal in the local and his affectionate but unflinching instinct for the story of us all: an evocation of that mysterious body that is a nation, deepened by the palpable sense of our individual bodies finding or losing their way in the nationless territory of birth, growing up, sex, ageing and death.

A collection of new stories from the Booker-prize winning author of Last Orders, and of the Sunday Times bestseller Mothering Sunday.Meet Dr Shah, who has never been to India, and Mrs Kaminski, on her way to Poland via A&E. Meet Holly and Polly, who have come to their own Anglo-Irish understanding; Charlie and Don, who have seen the docks turn into Docklands; Daisy Baker, terrified of Yorkshire; and Johnny Dewhurst, stranded on Exmoor.Binding these stories together is Graham Swift's affectionate but unflinching instinct for the story of us all: an evocation of that mysterious body that is a nation, deepened by the palpable sense of our individual bodies finding or losing their way in the nationless territory of birth, ageing, sex and death.Praise for Mothering Sunday:'Bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly… Swift’s small fiction feels like a masterpiece’ Guardian‘Alive with sensuousness and sensuality … wonderfully accomplished, it is an achievement’ Sunday Times‘From start to finish Swift’s is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve. The archly modulated, precise prose (a hybrid of Henry Green and Kazuo Ishiguro) is a glory to read. Now 66, Swift is a writer at the very top of his game’ Evening Standard‘Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives – the parallel stories – we can never know … It may just be Swift’s best novel yet’ Observer

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LAST ORDERS AND MOTHERING SUNDAY, and reissued for the first time in Scribner, a brilliant collection of essays, as well as brand new material, that will delight and intrigue readers. In Making an Elephant, Graham Swift brings together a richly varied selection of essays, portraits, poetry, and reflections on his life in writing. Full of insights into his passions and motivations, and wise about the friends, family, and other writers who have mattered to him over the years, this is a revealing and intimate collection. Kazuo Ishiguro advises on how to choose a guitar, Salman Rushdie arrives for Christmas under guard, and Ted Hughes shares the secrets of a Devon river. There are private moments, too, with long-dead writers, as well as musings on history and memory that readers of Swift’s novels will recognize and love.Praise for Mothering Sunday:'Bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly… Swift’s small fiction feels like a masterpiece’ Guardian‘Alive with sensuousness and sensuality … wonderfully accomplished, it is an achievement’ Sunday Times‘From start to finish Swift’s is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve. The archly modulated, precise prose (a hybrid of Henry Green and Kazuo Ishiguro) is a glory to read. Now 66, Swift is a writer at the very top of his game’ Evening Standard‘Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives – the parallel stories – we can never know … It may just be Swift’s best novel yet’ Observer

A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOKER PRIZE GEMFROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF MOTHERING SUNDAY AND LAST ORDERS, and reissued for the first time on the Scribner list, The Light of Day is both a gripping crime story and a remarkable love story.On a cold but dazzling November morning George Webb, a former policeman turned private detective, prepares to visit Sarah, a prisoner and the woman he loves. As he goes about the business of the day he relives the catastrophic events of two years ago that have both bound them together and kept them apart.  Making atmospheric use of its suburban setting and shot through with a plain man’s unwitting poetry and rueful humour, The Light of Day is a powerful and moving tale of murder, redemption and of the discovery, for better or worse, of the hidden forces inside us.‘A real in-depth study of humanity’ Alex Jones, BBC Between the Covers  ‘I loved this so much. The form is so interesting. The voice is just so clear and there’s this dryness to him too’ Omari Douglas, BBC Between the CoversPraise for Mothering Sunday: 'Bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly… Swift’s small fiction feels like a masterpiece’ Guardian‘Alive with sensuousness and sensuality … wonderfully accomplished, it is an achievement’ Sunday Times‘From start to finish Swift’s is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve. The archly modulated, precise prose (a hybrid of Henry Green and Kazuo Ishiguro) is a glory to read. Now 66, Swift is a writer at the very top of his game’ Evening Standard‘Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives – the parallel stories – we can never know … It may just be Swift’s best novel yet’ Observer

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LAST ORDERS AND MOTHERING SUNDAY, and reissued for the first time in Scribner, comes a novel called ‘Profound and powerful . . . an unputdownable read’ by Scotland on Sunday.On an autumn day in 2006, on the Isle of Wight, Jack Luxton – former Devon farmer, now proprietor of a seaside caravan park – receives the news that his brother Tom, not seen for years, has been killed in Iraq.For Jack and his wife Ellie this will have a potentially catastrophic impact and compel Jack to make a crucial journey: to receive his brother’s remains, but also to return to the land of his past and confront his most secret, troubling memories.Praise for Mothering Sunday:'Bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly… Swift’s small fiction feels like a masterpiece’ Guardian‘Alive with sensuousness and sensuality … wonderfully accomplished, it is an achievement’ Sunday Times‘From start to finish Swift’s is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve. The archly modulated, precise prose (a hybrid of Henry Green and Kazuo Ishiguro) is a glory to read. Now 66, Swift is a writer at the very top of his game’ Evening Standard‘Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives – the parallel stories – we can never know … It may just be Swift’s best novel yet’ Observer

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BESTSELLING MOTHERING SUNDAY AND LAST ORDERS, and reissued for the first time on the Scribner list, this is an intensely moving novel about a night that will change one family beyond recognition.On a June night Paula, a successful art dealer, lies awake, Mike, her husband of twenty-five years, asleep beside her. In nearby rooms their twin teenage children, Nick and Kate, sleep too. The next day, Paula knows, will define all their lives.  As dawn approaches, Paula recalls the years before and after her children were born. Her story is both a celebration of love possessed and a moving acknowledgement of the fear of loss, of the fragilities on which even our most inward sense of who we are can rest.  Graham Swift’s apparently most domestic book is that rare thing in fiction, a novel about happiness, though a happiness that is not all that it seems. An intimate and tender tale of a marriage, a family and a home, it begins to embrace big themes: nature and nurture, the illusory and the real.  Praise for Mothering Sunday:‘Bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly… Swift’s small fiction feels like a masterpiece’Guardian'Alive with sensuousness and sensuality … wonderfully accomplished, it is an achievement’ Sunday Times‘From start to finish Swift’s is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve. The archly modulated, precise prose (a hybrid of Henry Green and Kazuo Ishiguro) is a glory to read. Now 66, Swift is a writer at the very top of his game’ Evening Standard‘Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives – the parallel stories – we can never know … It may just be Swift’s best novel yet’Observer

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LAST ORDERS AND MOTHERING SUNDAY, and reissued for the first time in Scribner, a brilliant collection of essays, as well as brand new material, that will delight and intrigue readers. In Making an Elephant, Graham Swift brings together a richly varied selection of essays, portraits, poetry, and reflections on his life in writing. Full of insights into his passions and motivations, and wise about the friends, family, and other writers who have mattered to him over the years, this is a revealing and intimate collection. Kazuo Ishiguro advises on how to choose a guitar, Salman Rushdie arrives for Christmas under guard, and Ted Hughes shares the secrets of a Devon river. There are private moments, too, with long-dead writers, as well as musings on history and memory that readers of Swift’s novels will recognize and love.Praise for Mothering Sunday:'Bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly… Swift’s small fiction feels like a masterpiece’ Guardian‘Alive with sensuousness and sensuality … wonderfully accomplished, it is an achievement’ Sunday Times‘From start to finish Swift’s is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve. The archly modulated, precise prose (a hybrid of Henry Green and Kazuo Ishiguro) is a glory to read. Now 66, Swift is a writer at the very top of his game’ Evening Standard‘Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives – the parallel stories – we can never know … It may just be Swift’s best novel yet’ Observer

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 1996Four men once close to Jack Dodds, a London butcher, meet to carry out his peculiar last wish: to have his ashes scattered into the sea at Margate. For reasons best known to herself, Jack’s widow, Amy, declines to join them . . . On the surface a simple tale of an increasingly bizarre day’s outing, this Booker-prize winning, internationally acclaimed novel is a resonant and classic exploration of the complexity and courage of ordinary lives. Intensely local but overwhelmingly universal, faithful to the fleeting rhythms and accidental eloquence of everyday speech but also to the timeless truths of life and death, it succeeds in being comic and heartstopping, affectionate and wise, and in conferring on its stumbling, disappointed characters an enduring decency, dignity and depth.  ‘A surpassing testament to Swift’s vibrant and powerful gifts’ The Times‘A triumph . . . a story about the most fundamental things of all’ Evening Standard

The Booker Shortlisted Modern Classic from the author of Last Orders, Mothering Sunday and Here We AreOne summer morning in 1943, lock-keeper Henry Crick finds the drowned body of a sixteen-year-old boy. Nearly forty years later, his son Tom, a history teacher, is driven by a bizarre marital crisis and the provocation of one of his students to forsake the formal teaching of history—and tell stories . . .Waterland is a classic of modern fiction: a vision of England seen through its mysterious, amphibious Fen country; a sinuous meditation on the workings of time; a tale of two families, startling in its twists and turns and universal in its reach. Compulsively readable, it is a novel of resonant depth and encyclopaedic richness, mixing human and natural history and exploring the tragic forces that take us both forwards and back. It is also a book about beer, eels, the French Revolution, the end of the world, windmills, will-o’-the-wisps, murder, love, education, curiosity and—supremely—the malign and merciful element of water.‘A quite brilliant novel’ Daily Telegraph‘Inspired’ New York Times

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LAST ORDERS AND MOTHERING SUNDAY, reissued for the first time in ScribnerFor forty years, Willy Chapman has struck a strange but steadfast bargain between the two poles of his life: his beautiful but emotionally damaged wife and the sweet shop he runs on a south London high street. Devoted to each, he has maintained a delicate, precarious balance. Now, on a hot summer’s day, he attempts to settle his final accounts and reach an understanding with a third, disruptive element in his reckoning: his angry, unforgiving daughter.Spanning five decades and intricately exploring a doomed family triangle, Graham Swift’s first novel already shows the historical scope combined with intense intimacy that will characterise his work.‘A marvellous first novel’ New Statesman‘Brilliantly chronicled’ The Spectator

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LAST ORDERS AND MOTHERING SUNDAY, reissued for the first time in ScribnerBill Unwin, an academic of dubious status, has never recovered from the death of his famous actress wife and is now convalescing from a recent brush with his own mortality. He has two tales to tell. One, spanning post-war Paris, 1950s Soho and contemporary sexual and scholarly entanglements, surveys the muddle of his own life. The other, drawn from the notebooks of a Victorian ancestor, is the very different story of Matthew Pearce, a serious-minded man whose happiness is destroyed by his compulsive search for truth.Bill’s recollections of his beautiful wife, his wayward mother and his philandering stepfather, his wry reflections on his present plight and his unexpected bond with the forgotten Matthew combine to form a potent and moving mental quest. Embracing two centuries and a host of subjects—from ballet dancers and prehistoric beasts to the bewildering persistence of love—it asks nothing less than the eternal question: ‘Why should things matter?’‘A perfect piece of literary art’ The Spectator‘Masterfully done’ Washington Post

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LAST ORDERS AND MOTHERING SUNDAY, reissued for the first time in ScribnerPrentis, employed in the police archives, is becoming confused. His obsession with the plight of his father, a wartime hero now the mute inmate of a mental hospital, is alienating him from his wife and children, while at work he feels under scrutiny from his intimidating boss, Quinn. Gradually, Prentis suspects that his father’s breakdown and Quinn’s menacing behaviour are related and that the connection is to be found in his father’s memoir: ‘Shuttlecock’.Shuttlecock is an intense psychological thriller and much more. With poignant force and sometimes dark comedy, it links the secrecies and quirks of domestic life with the enigmas and violence of crime and war.‘A small masterpiece’ The Guardian‘Excellent, profound’ Alan Hollinghurst