Who is Ian McEwan?
Ian McEwan is an English novelist and short story writer known for the often macabre subject matter and suspenseful pacing of his work. While his gruesome early fiction earned him the nickname “Ian Macabre,” his novels have become increasingly more sophisticated and acclaimed throughout his career. His first published work, a collection of short stories entitled First Love, Last Rites (1975), earned McEwan the Somerset Maugham Award. McEwan has also won awards for his novels The Child in Time (1987), Amsterdam (1998), Saturday (2005), and Atonement. The last of these, which many consider his masterpiece, won four separate awards and appeared on TIME magazine’s All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels list. In addition to his books, McEwan has written screenplays for film and television, including The Ploughman’s Lunch (1985). Four of McEwan’s novels have been adapted to the screen, along with two of his short stories, and the film version of Atonement is slated for a 2007 release. Ian McEwan was b
Eustice: Ooh, he’s done a few. Saturday, Amsterdam, The Cement Garden Gove [nervous]: Anti-war march, euthanasia, teen incest. Hilton: This new one seems to be about a married couple in Dorset. It’s got everything we stand for: marriage… Dorset… Eustice: They say he’s very good. Always well reviewed in the broadsheets. Hilton [googling furiously]: And he’s on all the bestseller lists. This is the holy grail – cred plus sales! Serious yet popular. It’s exactly what we want for David. He will be the Ian McEnery of politics! Gove: McEwan. Hilton: Bike over a copy immediately, so David can have a practice. Mark the pages where marriage and Dorset appear most frequently. Put a note in telling him not to hold it upside down. Eustice: But the public have been so inundated by spin, they’ve become horribly cynical. They might think he’s only pretending to read it. Gove: Maybe we should think again about the banana? Oh how could I be so wrong about Bryan Ferry? I must apologise for last week
