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  1. Books
  2. Fiction
  3. Contemporary fiction

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4.3(3)

Learning to Swim

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LAST ORDERS AND MOTHERING SUNDAY, reissued for the first time in Scribner

Graham Swift’s first collection of short stories confirms his power to bring an edge of the extraordinary, the dangerous or the subversive into otherwise familiar, safe, even comforting settings. On a holiday beach, a mismatched couple wage a sexually charged war for the devotion of their literally floundering son. A family doctor, oppressed by his own domestic insecurities, intimidates an apparent time-wasting patient. A zookeeper becomes the keeper of a bizarre fixation . . .

While vividly evoking a recognisable English geography, these startling stories have an eye for the foreign, for the experience of refugees or for less definable zones of bewilderment and strangeness. More than one has a touch of the ghostly. Highly located yet haunted and haunting, they penetrate a hidden world of human dislocation.

‘Graham Swift should be read by everyone with an interest in the art of the short story’ Paul Bailey, Evening Standard

‘A masterful collection of stories’ USA Today


Author:

  • Graham Swift

Narrator:

  • Alex Jennings

Format:

  • Audiobook
  • E-book

Duration:

  • 6 h 48 min
  • 162 pages

Language:

English

Categories:

  • Fiction
  • Contemporary fiction

More by Graham Swift

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  1. Mothering Sunday

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  2. Tomorrow

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  3. Waterland

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  4. Twelve Post-War Tales : 'A marvel of the storyteller's art', Financial Times

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  5. England and Other Stories

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  6. Wish You Were Here

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  7. The Sweet Shop Owner

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  8. Shuttlecock

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  9. Making An Elephant

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  10. The Light of Day

    Graham Swift

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  11. Ever After

    Graham Swift

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  • 21 books

    Graham Swift

    Graham Swift was born in 1949 and is the author of eleven novels, two collections of short stories, including the highly acclaimed England and Other Stories, and of Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry and reflections on his life in writing. His most recent novel, Mothering Sunday, became an international bestseller and won The Hawthornden Prize for best work of imaginative literature. With Waterland he won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and with Last Orders the Booker Prize. Both novels were made into films. His work has appeared in over thirty languages.

    Read more

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Excellent4.3 out of 5