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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.
"Starred Review. The stories recall different eras stylistically as well, bearing echoes of Cheever, touches of O. Henry, and, in one chilling case, of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery.' With few weak spots and more than a few killers, it's a potent gathering." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. Few stories are longer than ten pages, and some are only four or five pages, but within the confines of brevity Swift manages to create lives and invest them with drama and import." - Library Journal
"Not all Swift's choices are perfect - some ... are heartbreakingly intimate, but others ... are underdeveloped at best. A uniting factor throughout is Swift's strong sense of place and the idea that life can be transformed in a moment." - Publishers Weekly
This information about England and Other Stories was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Ekko von Schwichow
Graham Swift was born in 1949 and is the author of ten novels, two collections of short stories, and Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry, and reflections on his life in writing. With Waterland he won The Guardian Fiction Award, and with Last Orders, the Booker Prize. Both novels have since been made into films. His work has appeared in more than thirty languages.
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