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Four men reflect on their pasts as they say a final goodbye to their close friend

Winning the Booker Prize in 1996 with Last Orders, Graham Swift’s work is praised for its simple but powerful portrayal of English life

‘“Hold on. What’s going on here?” I couldn’t help but voice the thought out loud. For, in that moment, I seemed to have been transported back into the midst of Shōkyokusai Tenkatsu’s Magic Troupe. I’d crossed paths with Tenkatsu’s troupe long ago, before I’d started high school.’ 

‘I am a child shaped in beeswax. I am made like a doll the size of a human forearm. They have given me hair and fingernail parings from the person who is to suffer. I was borne by my mistress for forty weeks under her right arm as if I was a proper child, and my wax was softened by her warmth.’ 

‘The orchard, vibrantly green and with adobe walls, backed up against the village at one end and bordered the river at the other. It was an orchard mostly of sweet and sour cherries. The villa, a mixture of rustic and urban architecture, sat in the middle of it.’ 

‘When my daughters turned twelve I initiated them into the mysterious powers. Mysterious not so much in that they didn’t know those powers existed, or in that I’d kept them secret (I hid nothing from my daughters, since we were of the same sex)’

‘It was then that I heard a knocking on the windowpane. And there, behind the glass, stood Nelso Tabiòna. He was looking at me in silence, in keeping with his most personal principle of discretion. As a matter of fact, he deems it proper to announce himself in this manner.’ 

‘Little is left, men or animals. Hoes and sickles lie where they were dropped, in the corners of fields dried up for lack of rain. A narrow, stinking creek provides water, but it dwindles visibly day by day, sucked dry by the fierce heat evaporating it, making the air humid and heavy.’ 

‘Why am I in this car? I’ll sit still. Sometimes, if you don’t move, your memory comes back. But it’s not working. One thing is certain, the driver is smoking. The vehicle is filled with heavy smoke. My eyes are burning. I feel sick.’