Graham Swift

"This study covers all of Swift's novels to date (including his latest, The Light of Day) and is the most recent monograph on him to appear. It offers a close reading of each of the novels, exploring their 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 recognizably postmodern novels are seen here as symptomatic of contemporary Britain; a world where, in the shadow of nuclear holocaust, we approach 'the End of History' and only 'telling stories' seems to offer solace."--BOOK JACKET.

Daniel Lea is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at Oxford Brookes University.

Series editor’s foreword * Acknowledgements * List of abbreviations * Introduction: Lost in transmission * The Sweet Shop Owner (1980) * Shuttlecock (1981) and Learning to Swim and Other Stories (1982) * Waterland (1983) * Out of this World (1988) * Ever After (1992) * Last Orders (1996) * The Light of Day (2003) * Notes * Select Bibliography * Index

Series editor’s foreword * Acknowledgements * List of abbreviations * Introduction: Lost in transmission * The Sweet Shop Owner (1980) * Shuttlecock (1981) and Learning to Swim and Other Stories (1982) * Waterland (1983) * Out of this World (1988) * Ever After (1992) * Last Orders (1996) * The Light of Day (2003) * Notes * Select Bibliography * Index