Ian McEwan
born June 21, 1948, Aldershot,
Eng.
British novelist, short-story writer, and
screenwriter whose restrained, refined prose
style accentuates the horror of his dark
humour and perverse subject matter.
McEwan graduated with honours from the
University of Sussex (B.A., 1970) and
studied under Malcolm Bradbury at the
University of East Anglia (M.A., 1971). He
earned renown for his first two short-story
collections, First Love, Last Rites (1975;
filmed 1997)—winner of a Somerset Maugham
Award for writers under age 35—and In
Between the Sheets (1978), both of which
feature a bizarre cast of grotesques in
disturbing tales of sexual aberrance, black
comedy, and macabre obsession. His first
novel, The Cement Garden (1978), traces the
incestuous decline of a family of orphaned
children. The Comfort of Strangers (1981;
filmed 1990) is a nightmarish novel about an
English couple in Venice.
In the 1980s, when McEwan began raising a
family, his novels became less insular and
sensationalistic and more devoted to family
dynamics and political intrigue: The Child
in Time (1987; winner of the Whitbread [now
Costa] Book Award) examines how a kidnapping
affects the parents; The Innocent (1990;
filmed 1993) concerns international
espionage during the Cold War; Black Dogs
(1992) tells the story of a husband and wife
who have lived apart since a honeymoon
incident made clear their essential moral
antipathy; The Daydreamer (1994) explores
the imaginary world of a creative
10-year-old boy. The novel Amsterdam (1998),
a social satire influenced by the early
works of Evelyn Waugh, won the Booker Prize
in 1998. Atonement (2001; filmed 2007)
traces over six decades the consequences of
a lie told in the 1930s. The influence of
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) is
evident in Saturday (2005), a vivid
depiction of London on Feb. 15, 2003, a day
of mass demonstrations against the incipient
war in Iraq. On Chesil Beach (2007)
describes the awkwardness felt by two
virgins on their wedding night. Climate
change is the subject of McEwan’s satirical
novel Solar (2010).
McEwan also wrote for television, radio,
and film, including The Imitation Game
(1980), The Ploughman’s Lunch (1983), Last
Day of Summer (1984), and The Good Son
(1993). Several of his screenplays were
adapted from his novels and short stories.
In addition, McEwan wrote librettos for a
pacifist oratorio, Or Shall We Die? (first
performed 1982; published and recorded
1983), and an opera, For You (first
performed and published 2008), both with
composer Michael Berkeley. In 2000 McEwan
was created C.B.E. (Commander of the British
Empire).
