Graham Swift was born in London in 1949. He is the author of "Last Orders", "The Sweet Shop Owner", "Shuttlecock", "Waterland" (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Guardian Fiction Award, the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour), and "Out of This World". He has also published a collection of short stories, "Learning to Swim". His work has been translated into more than twenty languages.