Graham Swift is a spellbinding storyteller whose primary concerns, in his novels, are the experience of loss and the ways in which human beings try to come to terms with loss. Real and symbolic bereavements haunt his work: the death or estrangement of a partner, parent, or child; the effacement of a sense of history and of identity; and the collapse of faith. Swift belongs to the generation of highly talented novelists born around the middle of this century--such as Peter Ackroyd, Martin Amis, Kazuo Ishiguro, Timothy Mo, and Swift's close friend, Salman Rushdie--who came to prominence in England in the 1970s and 1980s and who are now in their maturity. Swift's work, now consisting of six novels and a collection of short stories, has garnered critical acclaim and literary prizes and has won a large and appreciative audience in England and abroad; he has been translated into...