Reading Graham Swift

This collection of essays on Graham Swift’s fiction brings together the perspectives of renowned Swift scholars from around the world. Authors look at the swift’s oeuvre from different interpretative angles, combining a variety of critical and theoretical approaches. This book covers all of Swift’s fiction, including his novels and short stories; special emphasis, however, is on his most recent books. By approaching Swift’s work from a number of perspectives, the volume offers a synthetic overview of his literary output. In particular, it searches for thematic and formal continuities between his early and more recent fiction, and attempts to emphasize its new developments and interests.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Tomasz Dobrogoszcz and Marta Goszczynska Part 1: Beginnings and Continuities Chapter 1: Trauma and Confliction in The Sweet-Shop Owner and Waterland Philip Tew Chapter 2: Reticent Detecting: The Evolution of Swift’s (Un)Confessing Narrators Anastasia Logotheti Chapter 3: Masculinity as Failure: Male Characters in Learning to Swim and England and Other Stories Katarzyna Ostalska Part 2: Progressions and Evolutions Chapter 4: Nostalgia, Sentiments, and Men in Out of This World Katarzyna Wieckowska Chapter 5: The Father Delusion in Ever After Tomasz Dobrogoszcz Chapter 6: Filming the Unfilmable: Last Orders on Screen Adam Sumera Chapter 7: Re-Joycing Tomorrow: Graham Swift, Artificial Insemination, and the Question of Literary Paternity Donald Kaczvinsky Part 3: Recent Developments Chapter 8: Forget ‘Green English Fields’: War(s) in Wish You Were Here Catherine Pesso-Miquel Chapter 9: Spectres of Silence in Wish You Were Here Slawomir Konkol Chapter 10: The England in Englandand Other Stories David Malcolm Chapter 11: Lost for Words: Narration, Language and Communication in England and Other Stories Marta Goszczynska Chapter 12: ‘So How Did You Become a Writer?’: Metafictional Concerns in Mothering Sunday Bozena Kucala

About the Author :
Tomasz Dobrogoszcz is assistant professor at the Institute of English Studies at the University of Lodz. Marta Goszczynska is assistant professor at the Institute of English Studies at the University of Lodz.

Review :
Over four decades Graham Swift, one of the finest novelists and short-story writers of his generation, has created an acclaimed body of work inhabited by seemingly ordinary people going about their ostensibly unremarkable lives. Quietly unassuming but beautifully wrought and profoundly revelatory, his literary oeuvre invites and rewards critical scrutiny, as this rich and compelling collection of scholarly essays amply demonstrates. The first book in English to be devoted to Swift’s work in more than a dozen years, this illuminating volume traces the author’s preoccupations and investments across the full range of his literary output, while paying particular attention to the as yet underexplored terrain of his more recent works. Scholars and students of this major writer and of contemporary British literature generally will find it an invaluable resource. Reading Graham Swift is a fresh and timely overview of Swift’s writing, offering numerous insightful readings and new interpretations of his work. Its coverage is comprehensive, its scope eclectic, and its publication attests not only to the international appeal of Swift’s fiction, but also to the vibrancy of debate on his work. This collection will add enormously to Swift’s critical reputation as one of the most important British writers of the last fifty years.