Black Swan Green

Black Swan Green
UK First edition cover
AuthorDavid Mitchell
LanguageEnglish
GenreSemi-autobiographical, Bildungsroman
PublisherRandom House
Publication date
April 2006
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (Hardback)
Pages294 pp (first edition, paperback)
ISBN1-4000-6379-5 (first edition, paperback)
OCLC61513194
823/.92 22
LC ClassPR6063.I785 B58 2006

Black Swan Green is a semi-autobiographical novel written by David Mitchell, published in April 2006 in the U.S. and May 2006 in the UK. The bildungsroman's thirteen chapters each represent one month—from January 1982 through January 1983—in the life of 13-year-old Worcestershire boy Jason Taylor. The novel is written from the perspective of Taylor and employs many teen colloquialisms and popular-culture references from early-1980s England.

Mitchell has the speech disorder of stammering,[1] and noted in 2011, "I'd probably still be avoiding the subject today had I not outed myself by writing a semi-autobiographical novel, Black Swan Green, narrated by a stammering 13 year old."[1]

  1. ^ a b "Lost for words" Archived January 4, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, David Mitchell, Prospect magazine, 23 February 2011, Issue #180