Set in Southeast England, friendship and love among a group of men whose lives have been intertwined since World War II. When one dies, the survivors are brought together and are forced to take stock of the paths their lives have taken, by choice and by accident, since the war. Winner of the 1996 Booker Prize. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

On a bleak spring day, four men meet in their favorite pub in a working-class London neighborhood. They are about to begin a pilgrimage to scatter the ashes of a fifth man, Jack Dodds, friend since WWII of three of them, adoptive father to the fourth. By the time they reach the seaside town where Jack's "last orders" have sent them, the tangled relationship among the men, their wives and their children has obliquely been revealed. Swift's lean, suspenseful and ultimately quite moving narrative is propelled by vernacular dialogue and elliptical internal monologues. Through the men's richly differentiated voices, the reader gradually understands the bonds of friendship, loyalty and love, and the undercurrents of greed, adulterous betrayal, parental guilt, anger and resentment that run through their intertwined lives. Each of them, it turns out, has a guilty secret, and the ironies compound as the quiet dramas of their lives are revealed. Amy, Jack's widow, does not accompany the men; she chooses instead to visit her and Jack's profoundly handicapped daughter in an institution, as she has done twice a week for 50 years. Swift plumbs the existentialist questions of identity and the meaning of existence while remaining true to the vocabulary, social circumstances and point of view of his proletarian characters. Written with impeccable honesty and paced with unflagging momentum, the novel ends with a scene of transcendent understanding. (Apr.) From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

In Swift's latest work, following Ever After (LJ 3/1/92), a group of men bound together by their experiences in World War II and their efforts to scrape by afterward join to take the ashes of friend Jack to Margate and toss them in the sea. In flashbacks, the intertwining stories of the men's lives are neatly unfolded, told staccato fashion in the intimate, slangy patois of working-class Britain. We learn that Jack and Amy's daughter was born defective, that they adopted Vince as a baby when his parents were killed by a German bomb, that Vince has twisted and resisted the family tie, and that the family struggled to better itself to no avail. This and more is told at times rather too elliptically, but the story is affecting. Big tragedies can make a grand show, but it is the little tragedies we can all relate to that break our hearts. Recommended for literary collections.-Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

British novelist Graham Swift was born in London on May 4, 1949. He attended Cambridge University and York University.

Swift has written five novels, including Waterland.

(Bowker Author Biography) Graham Swift, 1949 - Novelist Graham Swift was born in London, England on May 4, 1949. He attended Cambridge University where he received a B.A. in 1970, and an M.A. in 1975. He also attended York University from 1970-73. He taught English part time at several London Colleges between the years 1974 to1983.

Swift's fiction tends to touch upon the subject of World War II as well as exploring the larger subject of history. "Waterland" established Swift's reputation and was made into a major film. He also wrote "Last Orders" and his novels have won a variety of prestigious literary awards and have been widely translated. Swift was an avid fisherman and co-edited an anthology of fishing in literature.

(Bowker Author Biography) Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.