Out Of This World

From the bestselling author of Last Orders and Mothering Sunday, reissued for the first time in Scribner

In 1972, Robert Beech, First World War veteran and prominent figure in the arms industry, is killed by a car bomb. The event cuts short the career of his son Harry, a news photographer, and comes close to destroying his granddaughter Sophie. Ten years later, Harry, now working in aerial photography, and Sophie, visiting an analyst in New York, remain scarred and divided by the event. Around their broken relationship and Harry’s memories of his truncated career and his father, the novel builds a story that is acutely private yet sweepingly public, at the heart of which lies Harry’s lifelong dedication of the camera.

Out of This World spans many of the twentieth century’s scenes of conflict, but also contains some of Graham Swift’s most achingly intimate scenes of personal confrontation—scenes that, powerful and haunting as photographs can be, no photographs can capture.

About the Author

Graham Swift was born in 1949 and is the author of ten novels, two collections of short stories, including the highly acclaimed England and Other Stories, and of Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry and reflections on his life in writing. His most recent novel, Mothering Sunday, became an international bestseller and won The Hawthornden Prize for best work of imaginative literature. With Waterland he won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and with Last Orders the Booker Prize. Both novels were made into films. His work has appeared in over thirty languages.