Winner of the 1998 Booker Prize, the Somerset Maugham award, the Whitbread Novel of the Year award and the 2011 Jerusalem Prize, Ian McEwan is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated contemporary writers.
His substantial body of work has earned him worldwide acclaim and firmly cemented his position as one of today’s best-loved novelists. If you’re yet to discover him, good news: we’ve deep-dived into his catalogue to bring you the essential Ian McEwan reading list.
McEwan launched his literary career with First Love, Last Rights , a collection of short stories for which he won the Somerset Maugham award. Hailed as ‘a talented and genuinely imaginative writer’ by the New Statesman , ‘a brand-new writer of formidable talent’ by the Daily Mail and as ‘the most promising writer around’ by the Observer , this is a great starting point if you’re looking to get acquainted with McEwan’s work. Taut, brooding and atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness.
Billed as a tragic masterpiece, Enduring Love is guaranteed to keep you turning the pages long after lights out. Recently featured on BBC 2’s Between the Covers and now sporting a stunning new jacket, this suspenseful novel centres around one brief moment that changes the course of a life. Fate puts our central character Joe Rose on a collision course with a man named Jed Parry. This chance encounter spawns an obsession so powerful that it tests the very limits of Joe’s beliefs, and his marriage, and drives him to the brink of murder and madness.
Winner of the 1998 Man Booker prize, Amsterdam is one of McEwan’s landmark works. Described as ‘a psychologically brilliant study of heartlessness’ by the Sunday Telegraph , this novel opens with two old friends – Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday – unexpectedly reuniting at the funeral of their shared former lover. Both men have gone on to enjoy dazzling success, Clive as Britain’s most eminent modern composer and Vernon as the editor of a respected broadsheet. And yet, in the weeks that follow, their lives become bound together in ways neither could have possibly imagined, leading them on a journey to the heart of Amsterdam, and their inevitable doom.
On the hottest day of the summer, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister strip off her clothes and plunge into a fountain in their country home. But she wasn’t the only one watching. By the end of that sweltering day, the lives of three people will be irrevocably changed. A modern classic, one of the Guardian ’s 100 ‘Best Books of the 21st Century’, and inspiration for the smash-hit film starring Keira Knightley, James McAvoy and Saoirse Ronan, Atonement is a must-read for anyone new to McEwan’s work.
Saturday centres around one single, pivotal day during the London anti-war protest of 2003. On Saturday 15 February, Henry Perowne stands at his bedroom window before dawn and watches a plane – ablaze with fire like a meteor – arcing across the London sky. While political activists mass in the streets, a minor car accident brings Henry into confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive man, who appears to be profoundly unwell. But it is not until Baxter makes a sudden appearance at the Perowne family home that Henry’s earlier sense of unease seems to be justified…
Set in 1960s Dorset, On Chesil Beach is a devastating novella focused on newly married couple Florence and Edward. Over dinner in their rooms, they struggle to suppress their private fears of the wedding night to come. Unbeknownst to them both, the events of the evening will haunt them for the rest of their lives. The Guardian said: ‘McEwan brings Florence and Edward touchingly alive for us; and their seriousness, their idealism, and their desire for love draw us towards them.’ Like Atonement , On Chesil Beach has also enjoyed a cinematic life, with Saoirse Ronan once more playing a lead role.
Often writing on the pulse of the news agenda, McEwan turns his eye to the climate crisis in this darkly satirical novel. Ranging from the Arctic Circle to the deserts of New Mexico, Solar shows human frailty struggling with the most pressing and complex problem of our time. In this novel we meet Michael Beard, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. When Beard’s professional and personal worlds collide in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself for Beard to reinvigorate his career and save the world from environmental disaster. A story of one man’s greed and self-deception, it is a profound and stylish work that is also ‘enormously entertaining’ to read, in the words of the Sunday Times .
Named for the 1989 British legislation – which states that a child’s welfare should be the ‘paramount consideration’ in court cases, taking priority over parental and religious wishes – The Children Act explores the application of this ruling. Fiona Maye, a leading High Court judge, is called on to try an urgent case. For religious reasons, a seventeen-year-old boy is refusing the medical treatment that could save his life. When Fiona visits the boy, the encounter stirs long-buried feelings in her. Should the secular court overrule sincerely held faith? It is Fiona who must decide whether he lives or dies, and her judgement will have momentous consequences for them both.
The number one Sunday Times bestseller, Machines Like Me is a dazzling exploration of humanity that asks, can a machine ever truly understand the human heart? In this provocative novel we meet Charlie, a young man drifting through life, who is in love with Miranda, a promising young student with a terrible secret. When Charlie finds himself with an unexpected windfall he purchases Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. Adam is beautiful, strong and clever, and soon a love triangle forms between the three, leading to a profound moral dilemma: what makes us human?
When the world was still counting the cost of the Second World War, young Roland Baines’s life was turned upside down. Two thousand miles from his mother’s protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracted a piano teacher which would leave scars, as well as a memory of love that will never fade. From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the current pandemic and climate change, our central character Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it. Epic, mesmerising and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times – a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one man’s lifetime.
