This FWO-funded PhD research project (1999-2003) analyses the novels of the contemporary British writer Graham Swift against the background of the “ethical turn” in literary studies and the emergence of trauma theory. It charts the entire trajectory of Swift’s engagement with the perils, pitfalls, and possibilities of navigating a post-traumatic condition, proceeding from an emphasis on denial in his early work, through an intense preoccupation with the demands of trauma in the “middle-period” novels (including Waterland), to a seemingly liberating insistence on regeneration and renewal in Last Orders and The Light of Day.