Which Graham Swift novel won the 1996 Booker Prize?

Last Orders won the 1996 Booker Prize for Graham Swift.

The novel follows four men travelling from Bermondsey to Margate to scatter the ashes of Jack Dodds, a friend whose final wishes set the journey in motion. Swift tells the story through shifting voices and flashbacks, gradually revealing complicated friendships, marriages, betrayals and long-held resentments.

Its title has two connected meanings: Jack’s final instructions are the group’s “last orders,” while the phrase also evokes the final round of drinks before a pub closes. The novel’s structure and its treatment of memory were influenced by William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, though Swift described the relationship as a homage rather than a simple imitation.

Readers sometimes confuse Last Orders with Swift’s earlier Booker-shortlisted novel Waterland, published in 1983. Waterland was not the winner; Last Orders gave Swift his Booker victory in 1996 and was later adapted into a 2001 film directed by Fred Schepisi.