Wish You Were Here

Informationen zum Autor Graham Swift was born in 1949 and is the author of eight acclaimed novels and a collection of short stories; his most recent work is Making an Elephant , a book of essays, portraits, poetry and reflections on his life in writing. With Waterland he won the Guardian Fiction Prize (1983), and with Last Orders the Booker Prize (1996). Both novels have since been made into films. Graham Swift's work has appeared in over thirty languages. Klappentext On an autumn day in 2006, on the Isle of Wight, Jack Luxton, former Devon farmer and now the proprietor of a seaside caravan park, receives the news that his soldier brother Tom, not seen for years, has been killed in Iraq. For Jack and his wife Ellie this will have a potentially catastrophic impact. For Jack in particular it means a crucial journey—to receive his brother’s remains, but also into his own most secret, troubling memories and into the land of his and Ellie’s past. Wish You Were Here is both a gripping account of things that touch and test our human core and a resonant novel about a changing England. Rich with a sense of the intimate and the local, it is also, inescapably, about a wider, afflicted world. Moving towards an almost unbearably tense climax, it allows us to feel the stuff of headlines—the return of a dead soldier from a foreign war—as heart-wrenching personal truth. Praise for Graham Swift’s previous work ‘Perfectly controlled, superbly written. Waterland is original, compelling and narration of the highest order’ Guardian ‘This beautifully balanced novel describes the arrangements, accommodations, pacts and treaties of our ordinary lives’ The Times ‘ Last Orders confirms his reputation as one of the great contemporary chroniclers of landscape and memory’ Observer ‘Not a book the reader is likely to forget, Out of this World deserves to be ranked at the forefront of contemporary literature’ New York Times Book Review ‘Swift’s central strength as a writer is his integrity. Story and character are treated with a seriousness and respect that while allowing for the oddity of human behaviour – Shuttlecock is thoroughly and beautifully odd – always honours them’ TLS ‘Swift’s essays display the same quiet intensity as his fiction, a capacity for subtle storytelling with dark emotional undercurrents’ Financial Times ‘An immensely readable volume. On every page, Swift emerges as a considerable essayist, who upholds the sterling virtue of good writing combined with emotional and intellectual engagement’ Evening Standard Vorwort A masterly work from one of our greatest writers. Zusammenfassung On an autumn day in 2006, on the Isle of Wight, Jack Luxton, former Devon farmer and now the proprietor of a seaside caravan park, receives the news that his soldier brother Tom, not seen for years, has been killed in Iraq. For Jack and his wife Ellie this will have a potentially catastrophic impact. For Jack in particular it means a crucial journey—to receive his brother’s remains, but also into his own most secret, troubling memories and into the land of his and Ellie’s past. Wish You Were Here is both a gripping account of things that touch and test our human core and a resonant novel about a changing England. Rich with a sense of the intimate and the local, it is also, inescapably, about a wider, afflicted world. Moving towards an almost unbearably tense climax, it allows us to feel the stuff of headlines—the return of a dead soldier from a foreign war—as heart-wrenching personal truth. ...

Product details

• Authors: Graham Swift, Graham Wift
• Publisher: Macmillan
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 03.06.2011
• EAN: 9780330535830
• ISBN: 978-0-330-53583-0
• No. of pages: 368
• Subject: Education and learning > Readings/interpretations/reading notes > English