This highly personal book is a singular and open-spirited account of a writer's life. It has evolved entirely with its author, bringing pieces from various stages of Graham Swift's career together with new essays, observations, poetry and interviews. Swift writes about the intimacy of playing the guitar and the perils of reading in public; of the pleasures of spending time with Ishiguro and Rushdie or sharing a private moment with Montaigne; of youthful adventures in Greece, the experience of Czechoslovakia mid-Velvet Revolution, and of the rich material offered on his very own doorstep by the district of London in which he lives, walks and works. Making an Elephant is a book of encounters, between the writer and his younger selves, father and son, present and past, author and director, reader and the page — and between friends. Full of life, charm and candour, it illustrates and celebrates the layers of experience, history and interpretation that inform not only the process of writing, but also shape the writer himself.
