"Waterland, like the Hardy novels, carries with all else a profound knowledge of a people, a place, and their interweaving... Swift tells his tale with wonderful contemporary verve and verbal felicity... A fine and original work."--Los Angeles Times

Graham Swift was born in 1949 and is the author of eight acclaimed novels and a collection of short stories; his most recent work is Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry and reflections on his life in writing. With Waterland he won the Guardian Fiction Prize (1983), and with Last Orders the Booker Prize (1996). Both novels have since been made into films. Graham Swift's work has appeared in over thirty languages.