Graham Swift's second novel, Shuttlecock (1981), which won the biannual Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award for fiction in 1983, is a psychological thriller which constructs a nightmarish version of late-twentieth-century urban life through the eyes of Prentis, a weak and self-conscious narrator. The plot, which centres on a dark secret with the potential to turn the protagonist's war hero father from a celebrated spy (code name ‘Shuttlecock') into a traitor, allows Swift to examine, through a parent-child conflict, how the myth of heroism survives the brutality inherent in human nature.
The text of the novel is the diary of Prentis, a police investigator of “dead crimes” known only by his last name. Embedded in his text are extracts from his father's war memoir as well as fragments from police files and reports. Unlike the narrators in...
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Citation: Logotheti, Anastasia. "Shuttlecock". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 August 2004; last revised 23 January 2019. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11971, accessed 05 December 2025.]
