Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

January, 1982. Thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor – covert stammerer and reluctant poet – anticipates a stultifying year in his backwater English village. But he hasn't reckoned with bullies, simmering family discord, the Falklands War, a threatened gypsy invasion and those mysterious entities known as girls. Charting thirteen months in the black hole between childhood and adolescence, this is a captivating novel, wry, painful and vibrant with the stuff of life.

(From Publisher)

David Mitchell’s first novel, GHOSTWRITTEN, was published in 1999 and was awarded the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His second novel, NUMBER9DREAM, followed in 2001 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2003, David Mitchell was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and his third novel, CLOUD ATLAS was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the British Book Awards Best Literary Fiction and the US National Book Critics Circle Awards, as well as winning the South Bank Show Literature Prize. His fourth novel, BLACK SWAN GREEN, was shortlisted for the Costa Prize. Born in 1969, he grew up in Worcestershire, spent several years teaching in Japan, has lived in Ireland, and is now living back in Japan with his wife and two children.