England and Other Stories

A collection of new stories from the Booker-prize winning author of Last Orders, and of the Sunday Times bestseller Mothering Sunday. Meet Dr Shah , who has never been to India, and Mrs Kaminski , on her way to Poland via A&E. Meet Holly and Polly , who have come to their own Anglo-Irish understanding; Charlie and Don , who have seen the docks turn into Docklands; Daisy Baker , terrified of Yorkshire; and Johnny Dewhurst , stranded on Exmoor. Binding these stories together is Graham Swift‘s affectionate but unflinching instinct for the story of us all: an evocation of that mysterious body that is a nation, deepened by the palpable sense of our individual bodies finding or losing their way in the nationless territory of birth, ageing, sex and death. Praise for Mothering Sunday: ‘Bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly… Swift’s small fiction feels like a masterpiece’ Guardian ‘Alive with sensuousness and sensuality … wonderfully accomplished, it is an achievement’ Sunday Times ‘From start to finish Swift’s is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve. The archly modulated, precise prose (a hybrid of Henry Green and Kazuo Ishiguro) is a glory to read. Now 66, Swift is a writer at the very top of his game’ Evening Standard ‘Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives – the parallel stories – we can never know … It may just be Swift’s best novel yet’ Observer