Graham Swift: Learning to Swim: And Other Stories

Another ambulance wailed down Stepney Way, not for a mother and child, but for me.

And now I lie beneath fevered bedclothes. And now I can tell — from the disinterested if baffled faces of doctors (who no doubt have a different way of gauging time from clockmakers), from the looks of buxom nurses (ah — Deborah) who bend over my bed, lift my limp wrist and eye their regulation-issue watches — that my own breaths are numbered.

GRAHAM SWIFT was born in 1949 in London, where he still lives and works. He is the author of eight previous novels: The Sweet-Shop Owner; Shuttlecock , which received the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize; Waterland , which was short-listed for the Booker Prize and won the Guardian Fiction Award, the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour; Out of This World; Ever After , which won the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; Last Orders , which was awarded the Booker Prize; The Light of Day; and, most recently, Tomorrow . He is also the author of Learning to Swim , a collection of short stories, and Making an Elephant , a book of essays, portraits, poetry, and reflections on his life in writing. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages.