England and other stories

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 Swift's 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