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Atonement

Atonement

Discover the modern classic that has sold over two million copies.

‘A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended’

On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house.

Watching her too is Robbie Turner who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever, as Briony commits a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.

'The best thing he has ever written' Observer

**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**

Reviews

  • A magnificent novel

    Independent

  • A superb achievement

    New York Times

  • The best thing he has ever written

    Observer

  • He is this country's unrivalled literary giant...a fascinatingly strange, unique and gripping novel

    Independent on Sunday

  • McEwan's best novel so far, his masterpiece

    Evening Standard

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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; Nutshell; and Machines Like Me, which was a number-one bestseller. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.

Ian McEwan

Read more

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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.
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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.
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Features

Treasures from the Ian McEwan archive

In celebration of Ian McEwan’s 70th birthday this month, archive director Stephen Enniss unearths 4 treasures from the author’s literary archive that give unique insights into his extraordinary career.

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