Author(s): Graham Swift

Fiction

Four men once close to Jack Dodds, a London butcher, meet to carry out his peculiar last wish: to have his ashes scattered into the sea. For reasons best known to herself, Jack's widow, Amy, declines to join them. On the surface the tale of a simple if increasingly bizarre day's outing, "Last Orders" is Graham Swift's most poignant exploration of the complexity and courage of ordinary lives. 'His finest book to date; emotionally charged and technically superb . . . "Last Orders" is about how we live and how we die and our struggle to make abiding connections between the two' "Times Literary Supplement " 'Inspired . . . His finest novel yet' "Guardian" 'A triumph . . . A novel that unflinchingly contemplates human perishability, and that also pays unsentimental tribute to human resilience' "Sunday Times" 'Tragic, comic and wonderfully compassionate' "Daily Mail" 'A book to match his masterpiece, Waterland . . . Last Orders confirms his reputation as one of the great contemporary chroniclers of landscape and memory' "Observer " " " 'beautifully written, gentle, funny, truthful, touching and profound' Salman Rushdie