David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

Kelly Susan Frame (University of New South Wales)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2006

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Black Swan Green

(2006) is a semi-autobiographical novel by David Mitchell. It was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and nominated for the Man Booker Prize. The novel is set in 1982 in a fictional village in Worcestershire called Black Swan Green. It depicts a year in the life of the protagonist, Jason Taylor, a thirteen-year-old boy from Kingfisher Meadows who struggles to conceal his stammer. Ostensibly a

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Black Swan Green

explores maturation, self-discovery and the pressures of society on the shaping of identity. According to Mitchell, the novel has since been incorporated into curricula for speech therapists in the UK (“The Art of Fiction”, 18).

The novel is structured into thirteen chapters, each dedicated to a month of the year, with the final chapter set in

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Citation: Frame, Kelly Susan. "Black Swan Green". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 June 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=25301, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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