Editions

The Innocent

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9780099277095

  • Length: 240  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 18mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 210g

  • RRP: £8.99

The Innocent

The Innocent is a startlingly prescient novel from Booker prize-winning Sunday Times bestselling author Ian McEwan.

Into a Berlin wrenched between East and West, comes twenty-five-year-old Leonard Marnham, assigned to a British-American surveillance team. Though only a pawn in an international plot, Leonard uses his secret work to escape the bonds of his ordinary life.

The promise of his new life begins to be fulfilled as Leonard becomes a crucial part of the surveillance team, while simultaneously being initiated into a new world of love and sex by Maria, a beautiful young German woman. It is a promise that turns to horror in the course of one terrible evening – a night when Leonard Marnham learns just how much of his innocence he's willing to shed.

'The plot crackles like thin ice with dread and suspense' Mail on Sunday

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9780099277095

  • Length: 240  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 18mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 210g

  • RRP: £8.99

Reviews

  • "The plot crackles like thin ice with dread and suspense"

    Sunday Times

  • "Powerful and disturbing...a tour de force"

    New York Times

  • "To call The Innocent a spy novel would be like calling Lord of the Flies a boy's adventure yarn...it ensure McEwan's major status"

    Sunday Times

  • "The sheer cleverness of the book is dazzling, and only fully to be appreciated as you turn the last page"

    London Review of Books

  • "Generous in scale, simple in its hideous impact... Ironically, he has celebrated the obsequies of the East-West spy thriller by writing one of the subtlest"

    Mail on Sunday

More from this Author

View all View all
View all View all

About the Author

Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen books. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; and Nutshell, which was a Number One bestseller. Atonement and Enduring Love have both been turned into award-winning films, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach are in production and set for release this year, and filming is currently underway for a BBC TV adaptation of The Child in Time.

Ian McEwan

Related articles

/content/dam/prh/articles/adults/2020/june/ACBestBeachScenes.jpg

Recommendations

The best beach scenes in literature

Keen on a sandy escape? We've rounded up some of the best moments in literature to transport you right there.
/content/dam/prh/articles/adults/2019/september/Ian_McEwan_Article Card_V2.png

News

Ian McEwan addresses Britain’s current political chaos in new satirical novella ‘The Cockroach'

The author to follow Machines Like Me with a ‘political satire in the old tradition’ this month.
/content/dam/prh/articles/adults/2019/april/ian-mcewan-machines-like-me-article-card-v2.jpg

Features

Ian McEwan on rewriting the past and artificial intelligence: 'it's not quite a dystopia, it's something slightly better than reality'

From alternative realities to machine learning, Ian McEwan discusses the questions raised in Machines Like Me and how the dytopian novel is really about the present.

Our Use of Cookies

We use cookies on this site to enable certain parts of the site to function and to collect information about your use of the site so that we can improve our visitors’ experience.

For more on our cookies and changing your settings click here

Strictly Necessary

Strictly Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions. See More.

Analytics

Analytics cookies help us to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. These cookies may be set by us or by third-party providers whose services we have added to our pages. See More.

Preferences & Features

Preference and Feature cookies allow our website to remember choices you make, such as your language preferences and any customisations you make to pages on our website during your visit. See More.

Targeting / Advertising

Targeting cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you and your interests. They perform functions like preventing the same content from reappearing, ensuring ads are displayed and, in some cases, selecting content based on your interests. See More.