Swift swoops to A2

Writer to read at Borders on Wednesday

"I've always felt the key to universality is through locality. Experience is always in a place."

PREVIEW
	Graham Swift Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. At Borders; free

So says English writer Graham Swift about his latest novel, "Last Orders." In a book about South London men from the World War II generation, Swift has written about universal themes like history and work, isolation and loyalty.

The main characters in "Last Orders" are four old friends, going to scatter the ashes of a fifth man who has just died. The story is told by shifting narrators in a lyrical, and often humorous, British dialect. As one man, Ray, says near the beginning of the book, "It's a comfort to know your undertaker's your mate. It must have been a comfort to Jack. It's a comfort to know your own mate will lay you out and box you up and do the necessary. So Vic better last out."

As the characters take turns telling the story, the action moves from one scene to another, relating the men's histories in fragments that slowly come to illuminate the present.

The importance of history, and the gradual assembling of a story, are also features of Swift's previous work, most notably the 1983 novel "Waterland." As Swift said in an interview with The Michigan Daily, "I like that shifting point of view; I like to let the characters themselves construct their story."

But the most striking thing about Swift's novels is that they are works of the imagination, in a literary world filled with autobiographies and memoirs. Swift's books enthrall readers with unfamiliar characters and settings, even as they incorporate universal situations and ideas.

"I'm not the kind of writer who bases fiction on things that happen in life," Swift said. "The great joy of writing is that you get out of yourself into other experiences, worlds, lives."

Swift said that he began wanting to be a writer "when I was a boy, really ... I think it was because I read a lot. I was excited by what I read in books, and I wanted to do what authors did."

Swift's first novel was published in 1980, and since then he has written six other books, which have met with increasing acclaim and readership around the world. "Waterland" was a finalist for the Booker Prize, Britain's top literary award, and "Last Orders" won the 1996 Booker Prize.

"I was absolutely thrilled to have won it," Swift said. "There was a time when the Booker Prize didn't mean much here - now it's a very important thing."

He added, "I think I've won at a good point in my life and career," saying that if "Waterland" had won the prize, "it might have been too much success too early."

Swift acknowledged that it can still be difficult for literary novels to find an audience, but added, "I'm an optimist about all this. I believe that more and more, the potential readers want something that gives them something back. They get tired of other things that are shallow and predictable."

When asked for his thoughts on writing, Swift had an unusual suggestion.

"Write about what you don't know," Swift advised. "I always think you have to make the imagination work. That's where all the excitement is, and it's where the excitement for readers lies, too."

Swift's novels themselves bear out the truth of that statement.

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