These twenty-five new stories mark Graham Swift's return to the short form after seven acclaimed novels and confirm him as a master storyteller. They 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 via A&E, meet Holly and Polly who have come to their own Anglo-Irish understanding and Lily Hobbs, married to a shirt, Charlie and Don who have seen the docks turn into Docklands, Mr Wilkinson the weirdo next door, Daisy Baker who is terrified of Yorkshire, and Johnny Dewhurst, stranded on Exmoor.
Graham Swift steers us effortlessly from the Civil War to the present day, from world-shaking events to the secret dramas lived out in rooms, workplaces, homes. With his remarkable sense of place, he charts an intimate human geography. In doing so he moves us profoundly, but with a constant eye for comedy.
Binding these stories together is Swift's grasp of the universal in the local and his 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, growing up, sex, ageing and death.
'Swift's fiction has … grown organically into a social-emotional record of modern English experience sensed on the pulse, on the tongue - in the heart' Independent
'Graham Swift is a purely wonderful writer' Richard Ford
'A born storyteller' Daily Telegraph
'He writes the way that life goes' Anne Enright
'Swift has involved us in real, lived lives' John Banville
'He gets to the heart of people' Guardian
'He has an authority - of style, characterisation, grasp on life' Alan Hollinghurst
'He is an exemplary tour guide of unknown English lives' Daily Telegraph

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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 Swifts 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