Graham Swift

Peter Widdowson

Graham Swift

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Graham Swift is among the foremost contemporary British writers, having published seven highly acclaimed novels which are widely read by students and general public alike. Waterland has become a modern classic, and Last Orders won the Booker prize for fiction in 2006. This study covers all Swift's novels to The Light of Day: it offers a close reading of each of the novels, exploring the innovative formal strategies and identifying such recurrent themes as the presence of the past in the present, the blurring of distinctions between 'history' and 'story', fact and fiction, and the possibilities of redemption in a contemporary social and emotional wasteland. For the most part set in an urban, middle-class, claustrophobic and loveless present, and focused on usually fraught relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, these recognisably postmodern novels are seen here as symptomatic of contemporary Britain: a world where, in the shadow of the nuclear holocaust, we approach 'the End of History', and only 'telling stories' seems to offer solace.

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Graham Swift

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-iv

Dedication
pp v-vi

Contents
pp vii-vii

Acknowledgements
pp viii-viii

Biographical Outline
pp ix-x

Abbreviations
pp xi-xii

Introduction
pp 1-7

1 - Early Novels: The Sweet Shop Owner and Shuttlecock
pp 8-23

2 - Waterland
pp 24-43

3 - Out of This World
pp 44-60

4 - Ever After
pp 61-76

5 - Last Orders
pp 77-91

6 - The Light of Day
pp 92-107

Conclusion
pp 108-114

Notes
pp 115-117

Select Bibliography
pp 118-120

Index
pp 121-124

Miscellaneous Endmatter
pp 125-132

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Graham Swift

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