(2006) is a semi-autobiographical novel by David Mitchell. It was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and nominated for the Man Booker Prize. The novel is set in 1982 in a fictional village in Worcestershire called Black Swan Green. It depicts a year in the life of the protagonist, Jason Taylor, a thirteen-year-old boy from Kingfisher Meadows who struggles to conceal his stammer. Ostensibly a
bildungsroman,
Black Swan Greenexplores maturation, self-discovery and the pressures of society on the shaping of identity. According to Mitchell, the novel has since been incorporated into curricula for speech therapists in the UK (“The Art of Fiction”, 18).
The novel is structured into thirteen chapters, each dedicated to a month of the year, with the final chapter set in
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Citation: Frame, Kelly Susan. "Black Swan Green". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 June 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=25301, accessed 24 November 2024.]
