Ian McEwan was born on 21 June 1948 in Aldershot, England. He studied at the University of Sussex,
where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970. While completing his MA degree in
English Literature at the University of East Anglia, he took a creative writing course taught by the
novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson.
McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in
1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and
the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999.
He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book
Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize
for the European Novel (2004). He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2006, he won the James Tait Black
Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday.
There are a lot of writers out there who taut themselves as masters of the macabre, who describe their work
as "dark" or "disturbing." However, most of them couldn't hold a snubbed candle to Ian McEwan, whose work
has been redefining how dark dark can be for over thirty years. Through seriously demented novels such as The Cement Garden, Atonement, The Comfort of Strangers, and Enduring Love, McEwan has explored the
outer rims of sadism, sick sex, and surreal scenarios. With his thirteenth book, Saturday, the always
unpredictable McEwan has taken a true turn for the unexpected.
Anyone who has ever read anything by Ian McEwan knows well that he does not shy away from shock value.
In The Cement Garden he creeped out readers with a tale about orphans who hide their mother's corpse in their
cellar before degenerating into a feral state. In The Comfort of Strangers he described a European vacation marred
by a sadomasochistic murder. In his masterful Atonement he explored a child's twisted sense of morality against
a World War II backdrop. He has even brought his singularly grisly vision to children's lit in Rose Blanche and The Daydreamer, a spooky yarn about a boy who uses his imagination to escape his dull reality. Of course,
Ian McEwan is hardly a low-brow purveyor of cheap thrills. His prose is economic, but elegant, and his insights into
the human condition give his often unsavory subject matter a great degree of depth. These are the qualities that particularly
drive his latest novel Saturday.
Ian McEwan was born on 21 June 1948 in Aldershot, England. He studied at the University of Sussex,
where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970. While completing his MA degree in
English Literature at the University of East Anglia, he took a creative writing course taught by the
novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson.
McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in
1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and
the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999.
He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for
Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book
Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize
for the European Novel (2004). He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2006, he won the James Tait Black
Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday.
There are a lot of writers out there who taut themselves as masters of the macabre, who describe their work
as "dark" or "disturbing." However, most of them couldn't hold a snubbed candle to Ian McEwan, whose work
has been redefining how dark dark can be for over thirty years. Through seriously demented novels such as
The Cement Garden, Atonement, The Comfort of Strangers, and Enduring Love, McEwan has explored the
outer rims of sadism, sick sex, and surreal scenarios. With his thirteenth book, Saturday, the always
unpredictable McEwan has taken a true turn for the unexpected.
Anyone who has ever read anything by Ian McEwan knows well that he does not shy away from shock value.
In The Cement Garden he creeped out readers with a tale about orphans who hide their mother's corpse in their
cellar before degenerating into a feral state. In The Comfort of Strangers he described a European vacation marred
by a sadomasochistic murder. In his masterful Atonement he explored a child's twisted sense of morality against
a World War II backdrop. He has even brought his singularly grisly vision to children's lit in Rose Blanche and
The Daydreamer, a spooky yarn about a boy who uses his imagination to escape his dull reality. Of course,
Ian McEwan is hardly a low-brow purveyor of cheap thrills. His prose is economic, but elegant, and his insights into
the human condition give his often unsavory subject matter a great degree of depth. These are the qualities that particularly
drive his latest novel Saturday.