Most Popular Books by Graham Swift

From the Booker Prize–winning author of Last Orders and Wish You Were Here, his first new book of short fiction in nearly thirty years: beautifully crafted, piercingly observant stories that 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; meet Holly and Polly, who have come to their own Anglo-Irish understanding, and Charlie and Don, who have seen the docks turn into Docklands; Daisy Baker, who is terrified of Yorkshire; and Johnny Dewhurst, stranded on Exmoor. Graham Swift steers us effortlessly from the seventeenth century to the present day, from world-shaking events to the secret dramas lived out in rooms, workplaces, homes. With these open-eyed, eloquent and often comic stories, Swift charts a human geography that moves us profoundly.

In Waterland, Tom Crick, a history teacher in the Fenlands, is driven by a marital crisis and the provocation of one of his pupils to forsake his teaching and relate the story of his family, who have lived in the Fens since the eighteenth century. In Last Orders, four 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. For reasons best known to herself, Jack''s widow, Amy, declines to join them. On the surface the tale of a simple if increasingly bizarre day''s outing, Last Orders is Graham Swift''s most poignant exploration of the complexity and courage of ordinary lives.

In his first-ever work of nonfiction, Graham Swift—Booker Prize-winning author of Waterland and Last Orders—gives us a highly personal book: a singular and open-spirited account of a writer’s life. Here Kazuo Ishiguro advises on how to choose a guitar; Salman Rushdie arrives for Christmas under guard; Caryl Phillips shares a beer with the author at a nightclub in Toronto. There are private moments with Swift’s father and with his own younger self, as well as musings—on history, memory, and imagination—that illuminate his work. As generous in its scope as it is acute in its observations, Making an Elephant brings together a richly varied selection of essays, portraits, poetry and interviews, full of insights into Swift’s passions and motivations, and wise about the friends, family and other writers who have mattered to him over the years.

From the Booker Prize-winning author, an intensely moving tale that begins with a secret lovers’ assignation in the spring of 1924, then unfolds to reveal the whole of a remarkable life. • Don’t miss the major motion picture starring Odessa Young, Josh O’Connor, Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, Colin Firth, and more “Exquisite ... shows love, lust, and ordinary decency struggling against the bars of an unjust English caste system.” —Kazuo Ishiguro, The Guardian On an unseasonably warm spring day in the 1920s, twenty-two-year-old Jane Fairchild, a maid at an English country house, meets with her secret lover, the young heir of a neighboring estate. He is about to be married to a woman more befitting his social status, and the time has come to end the affair—but events unfold in ways Jane could never have predicted. As the narrative moves back and forth across the twentieth century, what we know and understand about Jane—about the way she loves, thinks, feels, sees, and remembers—expands with every page. In Mothering Sunday, Swift has crafted an emotionally soaring and profoundly moving work of fiction.

This novel of love in the world of 1950s vaudeville is a masterwork of literary magic from the Booker Prize-winning author of Last Orders and Mothering Sunday It is 1959 in Brighton, England, and the theater at the end of the famous pier is having its best summer season in years. Ronnie, a brilliant young magician, and Evie, his dazzling assistant, are top of the bill, drawing a full house every night. And Jack is everyone’s favorite master of ceremonies, holding the whole show together. But as the summer progresses, the drama among the three begins to overshadow their success onstage, setting in motion events that will reshape their lives. Vividly realized, tenderly comic, and quietly shattering, Here We Are is a masterly work of literary magic.

The Light of Day combines a powerful love story and a narrative of intense suspense into a brilliant and tender novel about what drives people to extremes of emotion. As in his Booker-winning novel Last Orders, Swift transforms ordinary lives through extraordinary storytelling. This new novel from Graham Swift -- his first since the Booker Prize-winning Last Orders -- is the work of a master storyteller. The Light of Day is a luminous and gripping tale of love, murder and redemption. George Webb is a divorced ex-policeman turned private investigator, a man whose prospects seemed in ruins not so long ago. Following the course of a single, dazzling day in George’s life, the novel illuminates not only his past but his now all-consuming relationship with a former client. Intimate and intricate in its evocation of daily existence, The Light of Day achieves a singular intensity and almost unbearable suspense. Tender and humorous in its depiction of life’s surface, Swift explores the depths and extremities of what lies within us and how, for better or worse, it’s never too late to discover what they are. Excerpt from The Light of Day Two years ago and a little more. October still, but a day like today, blue and clear and crisp. Rita opened my door and said, “Mrs. Nash.” I was already on my feet, buttoning my jacket. Most of them have no comparisons to go on -- it’s their first time. It must feel like coming to a doctor. They expected something shabbier, seedier, more shaming. The tidy atmosphere, Rita’s doing, surprises and reassures them. And the vase of flowers. White chrysanthemums, I recall. “Mrs. Nash, please have a seat.” I could be some high-street solicitor. A fountain-pen in my fingers. Doctor, solicitor -- marriage guidance counsellor. You have to be a bit of all three. The usual look of plucked-up courage, swallowed-back hesitation, of being somewhere they’d rather not be. “My husband is seeing another woman.”

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 Pullman In 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.

Dazzling in its structure and shattering in its emotional force, Graham Swift''s Ever After spans two centuries and settings from the adulterous bedrooms of postwar Paris to the contemporary entanglements in the groves of academe. It is the story of Bill Unwin, a man haunted by the death of his beautify wife and a survivor himself of a recent brush with mortality. And although it touches on Darwin and dinosaurs, bees and bridge builders, the true subject of Ever After is nothing less than the eternal question, "Why should things matter?" "Ever After is explicitly concerned with historical investigation, love, death, family affairs.... It moves quickly, and it vibrates with feeling and thought."--Wall Street Journal

From the prizewinning author of the acclaimed Last Orders, The Light of Day, and Waterland, a powerfully moving new novel set in present-day England, but against the background of a global "war on terror" and about things that touch our human core. On an autumn day in 2006, on the Isle of Wight, Jack Luxton--once a farmer, now the proprietor of a seaside caravan park--receives the news that his brother Tom, not seen for years, has been killed in combat in Iraq. The news will have its far-reaching effects for Jack and his wife, Ellie, 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 of his most secret, troubling memories. A gripping, hauntingly intimate, and compassionate story that moves toward a fiercely suspenseful climax, Wish You Were Here translates the stuff of headlines into heartwrenching personal truth. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.

Cambridge Literature is a series of literary texts edited for study by students aged 14 18 in English-speaking classrooms. It will include novels, poetry, short stories, essays, travel-writing and other non-fiction. The series will be extensive and open-ended and will provide school students with a range of edited texts taken from a wide geographical spread. It will feature writing in English from various genres and differing times. Learning to Swim by Graham Swift is edited by Richard Hoyes, Head of Sixth Form at Farnham College."

The Sweet-Shop Owner is set during a single June day in the life of an outwardly unremarkable man whose inner world proves to be exceptionally resonant. As he tends to his customers, Willy Chapman, the sweet-shop owner, confronts the specters of his beautiful and distant wife and his clever, angry daughter, the history through which he has passed, and the great, unrequited passion that has tormented him for forty years. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Swift''s Waterland established him as a major force in contemporary fiction--an "irrepressible, wide-ranging talent" (The Washington Post Book World). Out Of This World, his eagerly awaited new novel, confirms his status as a world-class novelist. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

On a midsummer''s night, Paula lies awake, Mike, her husband of twenty-five years, asleep beside her, her two teenage children, Nick and Kate, sleeping in nearby rooms. The next day, she knows, will define all their lives. As morning 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, the fragilities, illusions and secrets on which even our most intimate sense of who we are can rest. ''A triumph . . . This is Graham Swift at his impressive best'' "Times Literary Supplement" ''Paula talks the way that people actually talk . . . this is part of Swift''s overwhelming honesty as a writer: he writes the way that life goes'' Anne Enright, "Guardian" ''The rhythms of long-term partnership become the rhymes of the narrative itself . . . a subtle picture emerges of how coupledom is deepened by parenthood'' Robert MacFarlane, "Sunday Times" ''As assured and subtle as ever . . . Swift artfully reminds us that no set of relationships is ever free from complication and concealment'' "Spectator" ''Paula''s anguish is beautifully captured, as is her tenderness towards her loved ones'' "Mail on Sunday"

The first novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of "Last Orders" and "Waterland" In the sweet shop Willy Chapman was free, absolved from all responsibility, and he ran his sweet shop like his life - quietly, steadfastly, devotedly. It was a bargain struck between Chapman and his beautiful, emotionally injured wife - a bargain based on unexpressed, inexpressible love and on a courageous acceptance of life''s deprivations . . . threatened only by Dorry, their clever, angry, unforgiving daughter. ''In his moving first novel, "The Sweet Shop Owner," Graham Swift illuminates the history of one man through flashbacks on the last day of that man''s life. Through the succinctly evoked provincial decades one of the engrossing features is the difficulty of love and of communication between generations'' "London Review of Books" ''This beautifully balanced novel describes the arrangements, accommodations, pacts and treaties of our ordinary lives'' "The Times" ''A quiet but beautifully shaped book'' "Literary Review" ''Book for book, Swift is surely one of England''s finest novelists'' John Banville ''A remarkable novel . . . There is a touch of Joyce in Graham Swift''s revelation of the hidden poetry of small men''s lives'' "New York Times Book Review"