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An exquisite new collection of stories from the Booker Prize–winning author, about lives shaped and haunted by war.
Here are the soldiers and doctors and veterans, wives and lovers and children, who have been affected in ways both subtle and profound by the cataclysms of our times. In the aftermath of World War II, a young Jewish private, 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 approaches the brink of global disaster. On September 11th, a maid working for U.S. Embassy staff in London wonders if her birth on the day of the Kennedy assassination determined the course of her life. And at the height of pandemic lockdown, a respiratory disease specialist comes out of retirement and is faced with a formative childhood memory.
These stories show history in the making, the reverberations of each personal loss and triumph set across the sweep of decades. Tender, humane, rich with humor, grief and moments of grace and contemplation, Twelve Post-War Tales is a collection of masterpieces in miniature.
"A brilliant, illuminating collection of short fiction, perhaps the author's best...In Swift's touching, deeply humane stories, life leaves its mark in mysterious and sometimes-humorous ways. His gift for capturing in revealing detail the interior lives of people coping—or failing to cope—with disappointment gives each of these stories a rare depth." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[P]erceptive...Swift amply shades in the various ways his characters are affected by the long shadow of war or disaster. These finely tuned tales lend new meaning to the phrase 'conflict resolution.'" —Publishers Weekly
"Affecting...In stark, immediate prose, deployed with utmost patience, Swift holds us close and points to powerful truths." —Booklist
This information about Twelve Post-War Tales was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Ekko von Schwichow
Graham Swift was born in 1949 and is the author of ten novels, two collections of short stories, and Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry, and reflections on his life in writing. With Waterland he won The Guardian Fiction Award, and with Last Orders, the Booker Prize. Both novels have since been made into films. His work has appeared in more than thirty languages.
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