Twelve PostWar Tales

In the aftermath of the Second World War Private Joseph Caan, a young Jewish soldier stationed in Germany, seeks the truth about lost family members; in the 1960s a father focuses on his daughter’s wedding even as the Cuban Missile Crisis brings the world to the brink of disaster; in 2001, while planes fly into the Twin Towers, a maid working for US Embassy staff in London wonders if her birth on the day of the Kennedy assassination shaped her life; and at the height of a pandemic lockdown, Dr. Cole, a retired specialist in respiratory disease, returns to work and recalls a formative childhood encounter with illness and much more. These are just a few of the challenged characters we meet in Graham Swift’s Twelve Post-war Tales.   Tender, humane, funny and moving, Swift’s latest work of fiction displays his quietly commanding ability to set the personal and the ordinary against the harsh sweep of history. It is an outstanding achievement, confirming his status as one of the great, gentle voices of our age.   Praise for Swift's most recent novel, Here We Are    'A magical piece of writin the work of a novelist on scintillating form.' Guardian    ‘Here We Are smuggles within the pages of a seemingly commonplace tale depths of emotion and narrative complexity that take the breath away.’ Observer    ‘The book’s power comes precisely from the fact that it performs its magic in front of your eyes, leaving nowhere to hide . . . you wonder how he does it.’ Financial Times    ‘With a wizardry of his own, Swift conjures up an about-to-disappear little world and turns it into something of wider resonance.’ Sunday Times    'Swift has no equal in evoking the atmosphere of an era while probing human psychology with irony and tenderness.' L’Express, France    ‘Swift doesn’t write, he whispers’, Corriere della Sera, Italy    “In a dozen pages Swift can embrace a whole life”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany