Graham Swift, The Next Best Thing

Anastasia Logotheti (Deree-The American College of Greece)

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 May 2020

Places

United Kingdom (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Story

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

In May 2020 Graham Swift’s short story “The Next Best Thing” was published in the

Telegraph

. Set in Germany in 1959, the year part of the action of Swift’s most recent novel

Here We Are

(2020) also takes place, the 5800-word story focuses on the encounter between two strangers: a German public servant, Herr Büchner, and a soldier of the British Army, Private Caan. The soldier, who is “currently residing with the British Army of the Rhine”, is looking for news of his Jewish relatives who lived in Germany before the second World War.

In his early forties Amtsleiter Hans Büchner, who “had been a soldier himself”, works as supervisor of the Records department at the Rathaus, the town hall of an unnamed German town; he is “more than twice” the age of nineteen-year-old

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1182 words

Citation: Logotheti, Anastasia. "The Next Best Thing". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 September 2021 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=40582, accessed 28 April 2024.]

Save this article