Reading Graham Swift

Tomasz Dobrogoszcz is assistant professor at the Institute of English Studies at the University of Lodz.Marta Goszczynska is assistant professor at the Institute of English Studies at the University of Lodz.

Over four decades Graham Swift, one of the finest novelists and short-story writers of his generation, has created an acclaimed body of work inhabited by seemingly ordinary people going about their ostensibly unremarkable lives. Quietly unassuming but beautifully wrought and profoundly revelatory, his literary oeuvre invites and rewards critical scrutiny, as this rich and compelling collection of scholarly essays amply demonstrates. The first book in English to be devoted to Swift’s work in more than a dozen years, this illuminating volume traces the author’s preoccupations and investments across the full range of his literary output, while paying particular attention to the as yet underexplored terrain of his more recent works. Scholars and students of this major writer and of contemporary British literature generally will find it an invaluable resource.

• IntroductionTomasz Dobrogoszcz and Marta GoszczynskaPart 1: Beginnings and ContinuitiesChapter 1: Trauma and Confliction in The Sweet-Shop Owner and WaterlandPhilip TewChapter 2: Reticent Detecting: The Evolution of Swift’s (Un)Confessing NarratorsAnastasia LogothetiChapter 3: Masculinity as Failure: Male Characters in Learning to Swim and England and Other StoriesKatarzyna OstalskaPart 2: Progressions and Evolutions Chapter 4: Nostalgia, Sentiments, and Men in Out of This WorldKatarzyna WieckowskaChapter 5: The Father Delusion in Ever AfterTomasz DobrogoszczChapter 6: Filming the Unfilmable: Last Orders on ScreenAdam SumeraChapter 7: Re-Joycing Tomorrow: Graham Swift, Artificial Insemination, and the Question of Literary PaternityDonald KaczvinskyPart 3: Recent DevelopmentsChapter 8: Forget ‘Green English Fields’: War(s) in Wish You Were HereCatherine Pesso-MiquelChapter 9: Spectres of Silence in Wish You Were HereSlawomir KonkolChapter 10: The England in Englandand Other StoriesDavid MalcolmChapter 11: Lost for Words: Narration, Language and Communication in England and Other StoriesMarta GoszczynskaChapter 12: ‘So How Did You Become a Writer?’: Metafictional Concerns in Mothering SundayBozena Kucala