An After-Dinner’s Sleep - Softcover

"A deeply moving, deeply satisfying book." (Observer)

"What is so extraordinary about Mr Middleton’s talent is that, despite implacable domesticity, he is not trivial... Mr Middleton does not wish to change anybody’s view of the world; he only wants to help the readers understand and better the view of it that they already have, and his quietness, honesty and patience do indeed lead him to success in that endeavour." (Bernard Levin)

"At first glance, or even at second, Stanley Middleton’s world is easily recognizable... The excellence of art, for Middleton is an exact vision of real things as they are. And because he is himself so exact an observer, his world at third glance can seem strange and disturbing or newly and brilliantly lit with colour." (A.S. Byatt)

"Enlivening and heartening." (TLS)

From the Booker-Prize-winning author of Holiday. Rejacketed and reissued by Windmill to mark the 40th anniversary of Middleton's Booker Prize win.

One winter evening Alistair Murray opens his door to Eleanor Franks, a woman he has not seen for decades. A man apparently content with his life, even his retirement and bereavement have come as part of the natural order of things. But just when he thinks he must get used to the slow, lonely decline into old age, Eleanor arrives to make him call into question everything he has taken for granted.

'Middleton wrote books you remember decades on... He wrote a calm, whispering prose, full of unspoken suggestion between ordinary acts of daily living.' Jenny Diski

'He shows us the way we age and die now, with real and graceful disstinction.' Sunday Times