REVIEW: ‘Twelve Post-War Tales’ by Graham SwiftPlus ‘The Deserters’ by Mathias Énard and ‘Glass Century’ by Ross Barkan.
By Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
Graham Swift offers the title of his third collection of short stories, “Twelve Post-War Tales,” in an egalitarian spirit. The characters include ex-soldiers and war orphans but also teachers, miners, maids and other working-class Britons who know of battlefields only from textbooks and newsreels. Even these civilians, suggests Mr. Swift, have been shaped by war’s carnage. Everyone lives in a postwar world…