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Atonement

Atonement

On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, 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 is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend 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. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.

Reviews

  • Atonement is a magnificent novel, shaped and paced with awesome confidence and eloquence

    Independent

  • Subtle as well as powerful, adeptly encompassing comedy as well as atrocity, Atonement is a richly intricate book- A superb achievement which combines a magnificent display of the powers of the imagination with a probing exploration of them

    Sunday Times

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

    Independent on Sunday

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About the Author

Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen novels and two short story collections. 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

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Events

Lessons: Ian McEwan in conversation, 14 September 2022
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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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