Graham Swift tells of social struggles in the world and of the inner wars of people

When the father of English writer Graham Swift was nearing his death, his derangement was already evident. Battles were once again taking place in the mind of the former naval pilot. From his hospital bed on the military base, he loudly called out the name of his aircraft. The Second World War, which he had survived, had returned to the old man. Or had it never left him?

Graham Swift recounted this episode in his autobiographical book "Making an Elephant." Those familiar with it will read it as a commentary on the author's work, on the social struggles that are present in almost every story and novel. For Swift, after the war is before the war.

"After the War" is also the title of his new collection of short stories. Here, the brilliant contemporary seismograph takes the liberty of immersing the material in the sepia tones of the past. These are stories laden with the most secretive charges, but they are told against the backdrop of the two world wars, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and the coronavirus pandemic.

"Zoo" is Graham Swift's story about Lucy, a maid who works in the household of an American diplomat in London's Regent's Park. The daughter of Filipino immigrants shares her birthday with the anniversary of John F. Kennedy's death, but that's not the only political angle in the dramatically escalating plot.

The narrative derives its suspense from a trick Swift has long perfected, and one that retains its charm in Susanne Höbel's German translation. It is the barely noticeable gestures of everyday life that the Englishman liberates from their routines and imbues them with meaning through precise description.

What we see in "Zoo": Lucy, who once again has to care for Danny, the son of the diplomat couple Olson. A farewell party in their elegant house must be prepared, and their return to America is planned. Danny and Lucy form a close bond between two underclassmen. The child is in the way of their life-hungry and busy parents, and the maid has to make this situation bearable. After all, Lucy, as the daughter of immigrants, has reached the modest pinnacle of professional opportunities, earns a good living.

A wink is enough for the two main characters in Swift's story to understand each other. The zoo's animals have long been included in this friendship pact. Visits there have become more frequent, and it could be a beautiful autumn day under a blue London sky, if it weren't for this date: September 11, 2001.

One reads and knows: The idyll of Regent's Park was just a curtain. It is suddenly pulled aside, and the horror is there. American diplomacy, which Graham Swift portrays with almost satirical exaggeration, is tipping from private moments back to its public mission. Panic reigns.

One could criticize the book's title, "After the War," for being vaguely specific, but in fact, the twelve stories all reveal concrete manifestations of a trauma. The war has perpetuated itself in family histories, is stored in traditional memories, and is constantly being revisited in peacetime.

Graham Swift's work is not only about the excesses of military action, but also about interpersonal patterns that claim victims even in the smallest of spaces. In small English towns or the less than comfortable neighborhoods of London, this is where the story "Bruises" takes place.

Silent men! What's the point of having a relationship with them if they don't speak themselves? Graham Swift turns this topic into a short literary film. Shirley's husband sits at the kitchen table in melancholy silence night after night, finding the whole world too loud. He had enough of the noise in his time in the Royal Hussars cavalry, he says. At some point, an argument breaks out. The situation escalates until the decisive sentence is uttered: "Are you throwing me out, Shirl?"

The woman actually throws out the guy she's been with for years. That's one half of the story. You already know it fits the sinister word "war," which Graham Swift chose for his book title. The rest of the story, however, is a kind of comedy.

A man goes into a pub and thinks a little about his future. After a few beers, the drunk gets into a fight, argues with the bartender, and is thrown out by him. At the intersection in front of the pub, the man is positioned to go to hell. He dutifully marches in the suggested direction and ends up at Shirley's door. Heaven or hell? More likely the former. She takes him back, and they conceive offspring that same night. Human existence is, there's no other way to put it, a pure lottery.

Graham Swift's political approach doesn't come with self-righteous fanfare. His stories can offer a peace-loving world because they not only believe in the goodness of humanity, but also precisely describe its potential. That's hope despite war—who couldn't use that today?

Swift's stories range widely. In "The Next Best Thing," the action takes place in the postwar period. It centers on a man named Büchner, now a German city hall official, but who previously fought as a Wehrmacht soldier in Africa. At the end of the war, he was a prisoner of war in England. He is visited by a British private stationed in Germany, Corporal Caan. He is searching for relatives who went missing in the war. Büchner isn't actually responsible for the case, but he still wants to help.

This attempt at bureaucratic reparation is masterfully portrayed by Graham Swift. He counters the brutality of World War II with an allegory of sleeve protectors and grandeur. Reconciliation is possible, and Mr. Büchner is a different man after his encounter with Corporal Caan.

Graham Swift, who has been a top English-American writer for decades, is a master of understatement. His prose is fermented with feelings of affection, and at times even love, and these moments are not to be missed.

"Black" is the title of the story of Nora, a young worker who sews parachutes in rural England. It's 1944, she's eighteen, and she dares the unheard of on a bus: While the other passengers keep a safe distance from a Black American soldier, Nora sits right next to him. She starts chatting with the man from Alabama. After a few minutes of travel, she gets off the bus. She knows she'll never see him again. But she also knows she'll never forget him.

Graham Swift's characters are sometimes struck down by such flashes of emotion, but the situation is not always as clear as here. In "Beauty" things are complicated. Mr. Philipps has learned of his granddaughter's suicide and wants to see her room on the university campus where she studied. It's a strange idea, since the room has already been cleared out. The university dean shows the old man around the grounds. In the midst of his state of grief, he is suddenly touched by something else: the beauty of this woman, who walks shivering beside him. He falls in love. What he feels then is then gone as suddenly as it came. It remains a mystery to him as he sits back on the train taking him home.

"Even if you're here, you're not here," Shirley says to her silent husband. This is one of the most important lines in the collection of short stories "After the War." The characters who appear here are present absentees. They are waging internal wars with themselves or are entangled in warlike pasts through their memories. Graham Swift's great art: He transforms these lost characters into people, and as these people, they are fully present.

Graham Swift: After the War. Twelve Stories. Translated from English by Susanne Höbel. DTV-Verlag, Munich 2025. 296 pp., 36.90 f.