Out Of This World
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to Wish List failed.
Please try again later
Remove from Wish List failed.
Please try again later
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
Out Of This World
Narrated by:
Alex Jennings, Jane Collingwood
Buy Now for $21.99
-
Narrated by:
-
Alex Jennings
-
Jane Collingwood
-
By:
-
Graham Swift
About this listen
Critic Reviews
'Swift’s most ambitious and outward-looking novel…In unravelling the unhappy lives of member’s of the Beech family, the plot embraces the history of the century’s warfare and the attempts of individuals to escape the legacy of their past…a moving and painful saga.'
'Out of this World reaches beyond mere felicity of language by scrutinizing, in an intensely personal fashion, the perfectly drawn and imperfectly human characters of Harry Beech, an Englishman, and his daughter, Sophie… Swift’s achievement is that the important story of their self-education has been told with such simple, startling beauty. Not a book the reader is likely to forget, Out of this World deserves to be ranked at the forefront of contemporary literature.'
'A book which attempts to lay bare the soul of our green and pleasant land and embrace the broad sweep of time from the Bronze Age on, while encapsulating a claustrophobic family drama, is incredibly ambitious. The novel succeeds brilliantly…Swift writes with such clarity and economy the impression the book gives is of having been shown all the majesty and the emotional perplexity of history itself. A remarkably courageous novel and by far the best he has written.'
'The gradual rediscovery of the terrible past is as tense as a thriller…a powerful and exciting book.'
'Swift focuses with brilliant clarity and depth our Western angst and alienation – not only recording reality but conferring it…compulsively re-readable.'
'It appeals to the emotions, the intellect and the imagination …It contains more matter than half a dozen worthy novels each twice its size: its subject is the impact of the 20th century on consciousness. What is astonishing is that Swift treats this mighty theme with the delicacy of a Renoir…Swift’s great qualities as a writer are the keen freshness of his imagination, the accuracy of observation and the precision of his style…This is a novel for those who still believe in the importance of fiction.'
'Glorious…a moving, ingenious and often very funny tale of family love and estrangement that takes us to the moon and back, through the 20th century, around the world – Greece, Nuremberg, Vietnam – and deep into his characters’ wounded, resilient hearts…breathtaking virtuosity…rich, complicated, joyful, arresting.'
'As its title implies, this book breaks deliberately loose from geographical bonds, cruising the world’s skies from Wiltshire to Nuremberg, from Brooklyn to Thessalonika, from Cyprus to Vietnam…It is that rarest of English artefacts, a novel of ideas, but ideas that seem to emerge effortlessly from a classic generational conflict that spans the first seven decades of the 20th century. And it’s all done in a book of only 200 intensely concentrated pages. Quite a feat.'
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.