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.From the Hardcover edition.e, friendship, and kinship begun, ended, and renewed. Open-eyed, compassionate, and eloquent, these stories give us Graham Swift at his most piercingly observant of human behavior.
