Graham Swift

Waterland

أحد الأمومة

Shortlisted for the 1983 Booker prize, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize. Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man - let me offer you a definition - is the story-telling animal. Tom Crick is a passionate teacher, but before he is forced into retirement by scandal, he has one last history lesson to deliver: his own. Spanning more than 200 years in the lives of its haunted narrator and his ancestors, Waterland is a visionary tale of England's mysterious Fen country. Taking in eels and incest, ale-making and madness, the discovery of a body and a tragic family romance, this is an extraordinary novel about the heartless sweep of history and man's changing place within it. In the years since its first publication in 1983, Graham Swift's Waterland has established itself as a much-loved classic of twentieth-century British literature. It was shortlisted for the Booker prize, won the Guardian Fiction Prize and has been adapted into a film starring Jeremy Irons and Ethan Hawke. Superbly done: WATERLAND appropriates the Fens as Moby Dick did whaling or Wuthering Heights the moors. This is a beautiful, serious and intelligent novel, admirably ambitious and original. Observer Perfectly controlled, superbly written, and, as they used to say, riveting. WATERLAND is original, compelling and narration of the highest order. Guardian WATERLAND is a quite brilliant novel, so good that whether Graham Swift wins the booker Prize or not is in a sense a matter of little consequence. Daily Telegraph Positively Faulknerian in its concentration on murder, incest, guilt and insanity. The brooding sense of place as a shaping force in the novel's action is as powerful as Hardy's Wessex or Dickens's London. Time Out WATERLAND has the air of a novel classically at ease in its chosen, and uniquely particular, field of reference...Swift takes on and refracts a varied tradition: the family saga, the business saga, the novel of provincial life...and lays an unpredictable claim on a resonant area of life which he has made unequivocally his own. Times Literary Supplement A 300-page tour de force...A burst of exuberant fictive energy. Evening Standard A gothic family saga, a detective story and a philosophical meditation on the nature and uses of history...Rich, ingenious, inspired. New York Times WATERLAND is a formidably intelligent book animated by an impressive, angry pity at what human creatures are capable of doing to one another in the name of love and need...the most powerful novel I have read for some time. New York Review of Books Graham Swift's novel teems with energy, fertility, violence, madness...stunning. Washington Post Astonishing...an overwhelming success...the writing is fluid and earthy, eerie and realistic, complex and simple all at once. San Francisco Chronicle Mr Swift's first novel to be published in America introduces us to an artist doing almost everything right... A taut, exciting tale given resonance by the author's provocative and pungent meditations. Wall Street Journal A masterpiece...intellectually bold, provocative and challenging. The Nation Powerful, unforgettable...a stunning, wholly original work. Newsday A virtuoso performance. USA Today

Il paese dell'acqua

Blushes

Annelerin Kutsal Pazari

Wish you were here

"Stories that unite into a ... vision of a country that is both a crucible of history and a maze of contemporary confusions"-- Dust jacket flap.

England and other stories

writing from within

Making an elephant

El Pais del Agua / Waterland

Světlo dne

These 25 new short stories, written to go together and none of them previously published, mark Booker Prize-winning Graham Swift's return to the short form after 7 acclaimed novels, and affirm him as a master storyteller. Swift's England is a richly peopled 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 by way of her hospital bed. Meet Holly and Polly who have come to their own Anglo-Irish understanding, and Lily Hobbs, married to a shirt. There's Charlie and Don, who have seen the docks turn into the Docklands; Daisy Baker, who is terrified of Yorkshire; and Johnny Dewhurst, of Leeds, lost on Exmoor. Graham Swift steers us effortlessly from the Civil War to the present day, and the secret dramas contained within walls, rooms, homes, workplaces. With his remarkable sense of place and voice, he charts an intimate geography that moves us profoundly and yet at times makes us laugh out loud. Binding these stories together is his grasp of the universal in the local and his affectionate but unflinching instinct for narrative. England and Other Stories evokes that mysterious body that is a nation by giving us the palpable sense of individual bodies finding or losing their way in the nationless territories of birth, love, sex, aging and death.

England and Other Stories

Hier zijn we

Here We Are

Thomas Crick vive nei Fens, le terre bonificate e «sottratte all’acqua» dell’Inghilterra orientale: «un paesaggio che, tra tutti i paesaggi, è quello che più si avvicina al Nulla», un luogo in cui le azioni degli uomini sembrano costantemente soccombere alle forze elementari della natura. Insegnante di storia che per trentadue anni ha svelato ai suoi allievi i misteri del passato, Crick si trova ora costretto a mettere in discussione «sostanza e scopo» della sua professione e della sua vita. Alla scuola in cui lavora è stato «imposto di fare economie», e davanti ai suoi occhi aleggia lo spettro della «pensione anticipata». Il «vecchio Cricky» decide allora di non insegnare più la Storia con la s maiuscola nelle sue ultime lezioni. Cessa di parlare dello spargimento di sangue che, a Parigi alla fine del Settecento, ha dato il via al mondo moderno, e inizia a narrare del mistero del suo passato e delle sue storie. Storie della vita su un fiume, di un padre che catturava anguille, del cadavere di un annegato trovato nel fiume anni prima. Storie del mondo dei Fens, dove la terra è d’una piattezza così uniforme da spingere gli uomini a pensieri insonni e inquieti. Considerato uno dei grandi romanzi del secondo Novecento, Il paese dell’acqua è un’opera che ha il respiro e l’ambizione di una tragedia greca nel cuore dell’Inghilterra di tre generazioni. La presente edizione è accompagnata da una postfazione in cui Graham Swift si sofferma su genesi e procedimento del romanzo. "Un libro animato da un'immensa, furente pietà per quello che le creature umane sono capaci di fare in nome dell'amore e del bisogno. Il romanzo più potente ... da parecchi anni a questa parte". New York Review of Books "Scritto in maniera superba, perfettamente controllata... Originale, avvincente e con una narrazione suprema". Guardian "Un romanzo bello, serio e intelligente, dall'ammirevole ambizione e originalità". Observer

From the acclaimed Booker Prize–winning author of Last Orders, this highly personal book is a singular and open-spirited account of a writer’s life. In Making an Elephant, Swift brings together richly varied essays, portraits, poetry and interviews, full of insights into his passions and motivations, and wise about the friends, family and other writers who have mattered to him over the years. Kazuo Ishiguro advises on how to choose a guitar, Salman Rushdie arrives for Christmas under guard, and Ted Hughes shares the secrets of a Devon river. There are private moments, too, with long-dead writers, as well as musings on history and memory that readers of Swift’s novels will recognize and love. Making an Elephant is a book of encounters: between a son and his father, between an author and his younger selves, between writer and reader, and between friends. It brims with charm and candour, and reveals Swift’s alertness to experience and his true engagement with words.

Writing from Within

Making an Elephant

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.

Wish You Were Here

Time Out Novel of the Year ‘Astonishingly moving’ Sunday Express On an autumn day in 2006, on the Isle of Wight, Jack Luxton – former Devon farmer, now proprietor of a seaside caravan park – receives the news that his brother Tom, not seen for years, has been killed in Iraq. For Jack and his wife Ellie this will have a potentially catastrophic impact 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 confront his most secret, troubling memories. Building to a fiercely suspenseful climax, Wish You Were Here is a hauntingly compassionate story that allows us to feel the stuff of headlines as heart-wrenching personal truth. ‘Profound and powerful . . . an unputdownable read’ Scotland on Sunday ‘A wonderful writer’ Daily Telegraph

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LAST ORDERS AND MOTHERING SUNDAY, reissued for the first time in Scribner Bill Unwin, an academic of dubious status, has never recovered from the death of his famous actress wife and is now convalescing from a recent brush with his own mortality. He has two tales to tell. One, spanning post-war Paris, 1950s Soho and contemporary sexual and scholarly entanglements, surveys the muddle of his own life. The other, drawn from the notebooks of a Victorian ancestor, is the very different story of Matthew Pearce, a serious-minded man whose happiness is destroyed by his compulsive search for truth. Bill’s recollections of his beautiful wife, his wayward mother and his philandering stepfather, his wry reflections on his present plight and his unexpected bond with the forgotten Matthew combine to form a potent and moving mental quest. Embracing two centuries and a host of subjects—from ballet dancers and prehistoric beasts to the bewildering persistence of love—it asks nothing less than the eternal question: ‘Why should things matter?’ ‘A perfect piece of literary art’ The Spectator ‘Masterfully done’ Washington Post

Graham Swift

About

Books

Join the club