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

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About the Author

Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan (Author) 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, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen. Anthony Browne (Illustrator) Anthony Browne is the acclaimed author and illustrator of such prize-winning bestsellers as Gorilla (winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal and the Kurt Maschler Award), Willy the Wizard, My Dad, Voices in the Park (winner of Kurt Maschler Award) and Zoo (winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal). In 2009, Anthony was appointed Children's Laureate, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the world of picture books. Anthony was also the first British winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Award, one of the highest international honours for illustration. His work has been widely exhibited and his books are published all over the world.

Ian McEwan

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