Review
From the book jacket: Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor,
the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England,
1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an
exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik
enacted in boys' games on a frozen lake; of
"nightcreeping" through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled
thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn
Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van
Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less
than she appears; of Jason's search to replace his dead grandfather's
irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of...
Beyond the Book
David Mitchell was born in Southport in 1969 and grew up in Malvern, England. He studied for a degree in English and American Literature followed by an MA in Comparative Literature at the University of Kent. He lived for a year in Sicily before moving to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught English to technical students for eight years, before returning to England.
His first novel,
Ghostwritten,
was published in 1999, it tells the interlocking stories of nine narrators in nine locations across the globe. It won the
Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.
His second novel,
number9dream (2001), set in modern-day Tokyo, was shortlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize for fiction.
In...
