Making an Elephant

Making an Elephant Synopsis

From the acclaimed Booker Prizewinning author of Last Orders, this highly personal book is a singular and open-spirited account of a writers life.In Making an Elephant, Swift brings together richly varied essays, portraits, poetry and interviews, full of insights into his passions and motivations, and wise about the friends, family and other writers who have mattered to him over the years. Kazuo Ishiguro advises on how to choose a guitar, Salman Rushdie arrives for Christmas under guard, and Ted Hughes shares the secrets of a Devon river.

There are private moments, too, with long-dead writers, as well as musings on history and memory that readers of Swifts novels will recognize and love.Making an Elephant is a book of encounters: between a son and his father, between an author and his younger selves, between writer and reader, and between friends. It brims with charm and candour, and reveals Swifts alertness to experience and his true engagement with words.From the Hardcover edition.