Graham Swift, The Sweet Shop Owner

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: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1980

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

The Sweet-Shop Owner (1980), Graham Swift's well-received first novel, focuses on Willy Chapman, the sixty-one year old owner of two profitable small shops in an unnamed South London suburb. Hour by hour, the novel follows the protagonist during a day in his life: a Friday in June 1974, which is also his daughter's twenty-fifth birthday. As in all of Swift's novels, The Sweet-Shop Owner is concerned with the relationship between the individual and the forces of history within a society plagued by alienation in a fast-changing world, and the novel laments the loss of familial and communal bonds in post-World-War-II Britain. In terms of structure and technique this novel borrows equally from realism and …

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3161 words

Citation: Logotheti, Anastasia. "The Sweet Shop Owner". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 August 2004; last revised 04 October 2018. [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7870, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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