Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan
Occupation	Author, screenwriter
Nationality	British
Period	1975–present
Genre	Recent history
Spouse	Penny Allen (1982–1995) Annalena McAfee (1997–)
Website
http://www.ianmcewan.com

Ian Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL (born 21 June 1948) is an English novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

McEwan began his career writing sparse, Gothic short stories. The Cement Garden (1978) and The Comfort of Strangers (1981) were his first two novels, and earned him the nickname "Ian Macabre". These were followed by three novels of some success in the 1980s and early 1990s.

In 1997, he published Enduring Love, which was made into a film. He won the Man Booker Prize with Amsterdam (1998). In 2001, he published Atonement, which was made into an Oscar-winning film. This was followed by Saturday (2003) and On Chesil Beach (2007). His latest novel is Solar (2010).

Early life

McEwan was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, on 21 June 1948, the son of David McEwan and Rose Lilian Violet (née Moore). He spent much of his childhood in East Asia (including Singapore), Germany and North Africa (including Libya), where his father, a Scottish army officer, was posted. His family returned to England when he was twelve. He was educated at Woolverstone Hall School; the University of Sussex, receiving his degree in English literature in 1970; and the University of East Anglia, where he was one of the first graduates of Malcolm Bradbury's pioneering creative writing course.

Career

McEwan's first published work was a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites (1975), which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976. He achieved notoriety in 1979 when the BBC suspended production of his play Solid Geometry because of its supposed obscenity. His second collection of short stories, In Between the Sheets, was published in 1978. The Cement Garden (1978) and The Comfort of Strangers (1981) were his two earliest novels, both of which were adapted into films. The nature of these works caused him to be nicknamed "Ian Macabre". These were followed by The Child in Time (1987), winner of the 1987 Whitbread Novel Award; The Innocent (1990); and Black Dogs (1992). McEwan has also written two children's books, Rose Blanche (1985) The Daydreamer (1994)

His 1997 novel, Enduring Love, about the relationship between a science writer and a stalker, was extremely popular with critics, although it was not shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was adapted into a film in 2004. In 1998, he won the Man Booker Prize for Amsterdam, though it was considered one of his weaker works. His next novel, Atonement (2001), received considerable acclaim; Time magazine named it the best novel of 2002, and it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2007, the critically acclaimed movie Atonement, directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, was released in cinemas worldwide. His next work, Saturday (2003), follows an especially eventful day in the life of a successful neurosurgeon. Saturday won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for 2005, and his novel On Chesil Beach (2007) was shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize. McEwan has also written a number of produced screenplays, a stage play, children's fiction, an oratorio and a libretto titled For You with music composed by Michael Berkeley.

McEwan's most recent work, Solar, was published by Jonathan Cape and Doubleday in March 2010. In June 2008 at the Hay Festival, McEwan gave a surprise reading of this work-in-progress. According to reportage of the reading in The Guardian, the novel concerns "a scientist who hopes to save the planet." from the threat of climate change, with inspiration for the novel coming from a trip McEwan made in 2005 "when he was part of an expedition of artists and scientists who spent several weeks aboard a ship near the north pole to discuss environmental concerns". McEwan divulged to the audience that "The novel's protagonist Michael Beard has been awarded a Nobel prize for his pioneering work on physics, and has discovered that winning the coveted prize has interfered with his work" but denied that the novel, which was not due to be published for at least two years, was a comedy, saying "I hate comic novels; it's like being wrestled to the ground and being tickled, being forced to laugh", instead, that it had extended comic stretches.

McEwan has been nominated for the Man Booker prize six times to date, winning the Prize for Amsterdam in 1998. His other nominations were for The Comfort of Strangers (1981, Shortlisted), Black Dogs (1992, Shortlisted), Atonement (2001, Shortlisted), Saturday (2005, Longlisted), and On Chesil Beach (2007, Shortlisted). McEwan also received nominations for the Man Booker International Prize in 2005 and 2007.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, in 1999. He is also a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association. He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2005, he was the first recipient of Dickinson College's prestigious Harold and Ethel L. Stellfox Visiting Scholar and Writers Program Award, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In 2008, McEwan was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by University College, London, where he used to teach English literature. In 2008, The Times named McEwan among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

On 20 February 2011, he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, but his decision to accept it was controversial. McEwan received pressure to refuse the prize by many who consider that his acceptance would be used as a public relations exercise by the Israeli government. McEwan responded to his critics, and specifically British Writers in Support of Palestine (BWISP), in a letter to The Guardian, stating in part, "There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics, and for me the emblem in this respect is Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra – surely a beam of hope in a dark landscape, though denigrated by the Israeli religious right and Hamas. If BWISP is against this particular project, then clearly we have nothing more to say to each other." McEwan's acceptance speech discussed the complaints against him and provided further insight into his reasons for accepting the award. He also said he will donate the amount of the prize, "ten thousand dollars to Combatants for Peace, an organisation that brings together Israeli ex-soldiers and Palestinian ex-fighters."

In 2006 he was accused of plagiarism; specifically that a passage in Atonement (2001) closely echoed a passage from a memoir, No Time for Romance, published in 1977 by Lucilla Andrews. McEwan acknowledged using the book as a source for his work. McEwan had included a brief note at the end of Atonement, referring to Andrews’s autobiography, among several other works. Writing in The Guardian in November 2006, a month after Andrews' death, McEwan professed innocence of plagiarism while acknowledging his debt to the author. Several authors defended him, including John Updike, Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Thomas Keneally, Zadie Smith, and Thomas Pynchon.

McEwan has recently started work on a new novel, his twelfth. Although it is at a very early stage, McEwan has revealed that "it’s historical...[and] Set in the Seventies."

Personal life

He has been married twice. His second wife, Annalena McAfee, was formerly the editor of The Guardian's Review section. In 1999, his first wife, Penny Allen, took their 13-year-old son to France after a court in Brittany ruled that the boy should be returned to his father, who had been granted sole custody over him and his 15-year-old brother.

In 2002, McEwan discovered that he had a brother who had been given up for adoption during World War II; the story became public in 2007. The brother, a bricklayer named David Sharp, was born six years earlier than McEwan, when his mother was married to a different man. Sharp has the same parents as McEwan but was born from an affair between them that occurred before their marriage. After her first husband was killed in combat, McEwan's mother married her lover, and Ian was born a few years later. The brothers are in regular contact, and McEwan has written a foreword to Sharp's memoir.

Views on religion and politics

In 2008, McEwan publicly spoke out against Islamism for its views on women and on homosexuality. He was quoted as saying that fundamentalist Islam wanted to create a society that he "abhorred". His comments appeared in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, to defend fellow writer Martin Amis against allegations of racism. McEwan, a self-described atheist, said that Christianity was "equally absurd" and that he didn't "like these medieval visions of the world according to which God is coming to save the faithful and to damn the others."

McEwan put forward the following statement on his official site and blog after claiming he was misinterpreted:

Certain remarks of mine to an Italian journalist have been widely misrepresented in the UK press, and on various websites. Contrary to reports, my remarks were not about Islam, but about Islamism – perhaps 'extremism' would be a better term. I grew up in a Muslim country – Libya – and have only warm memories of a dignified, tolerant and hospitable Islamic culture. I was referring in my interview to a tiny minority who preach violent jihad, who incite hatred and violence against 'infidels', apostates, Jews and homosexuals; who in their speeches and on their websites speak passionately against free thought, pluralism, democracy, unveiled women; who will tolerate no other interpretation of Islam but their own and have vilified Sufism and other strands of Islam as apostasy; who have murdered, among others, fellow Muslims by the thousands in the market places of Iraq, Algeria and in the Sudan. Countless Islamic writers, journalists and religious authorities have expressed their disgust at this extremist violence. To speak against such things is hardly 'astonishing' on my part (Independent on Sunday) or original, nor is it 'Islamophobic' and 'right wing' as one official of the Muslim Council of Britain insists, and nor is it to endorse the failures and brutalities of U.S. foreign policy. It is merely to invoke a common humanity which I hope would be shared by all religions as well as all non-believers.'

In 2008, McEwan was among a list of more than 200,000 writers of a petition to support Roberto Saviano, in exposing the Neapolitan mafia in the book, Gomorrah. The petition urges Italian police to assure the full protection of Saviano from the mafia, while comparing the mob's threats against Saviano to "the tactics used by extremist religious groups".

McEwan lent his support to the campaign to release Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning after being convicted of committing adultery.

On winning the Jerusalem Prize, McEwan defended himself against criticism for accepting the prize in light of opposition to Israeli policies, saying "If you didn't go to countries whose foreign policy or domestic policy is screwed up, you'd never get out of bed". On accepting the honour he spoke in favour of Israel's existence, security, and freedoms while strongly attacking Hamas, as well as Israel's policies in Gaza, and the expansion of settlements, notable as the audience included political leaders such as Israeli President Shimon Peres and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat. He also personally attended a protest against the expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory.

Bibliography

Novels The Cement Garden (1978) The Comfort of Strangers (1981) The Child in Time (1987) The Innocent (1990) Black Dogs (1992) Enduring Love (1997) Amsterdam (1998) Atonement (2001) Saturday (2005) On Chesil Beach (2007) Solar (2010) Short story collections First Love, Last Rites (1975) In Between the Sheets (1978)

Children's fiction Rose Blanche (1985) The Daydreamer (1994) Plays The Imitation Game (1981) Screenplays Jack Flea's Birthday Celebration ( 1976) The Ploughman's Lunch (1985) Sour Sweet (1989) The Good Son (1993) Oratorio or Shall We Die? (1983) Libretto For You (2008)

Film adaptations

• Last Day of Summer (1984)
• The Cement Garden (1993)
• The Comfort of Strangers (1990)
• The Innocent (1993)
• Solid Geometry (2002)
• Enduring Love (2004)
• Atonement (2007)

Further reading

• Byrnes, Christina (1995), Sex and Sexuality in Ian McEwan's Work, Nottingham, England: Pauper's Press. ISBN 094665056X
• Byrnes, Christina (2002), The Work of Ian McEwan: A Psychodynamic Approach, Nottingham, England: Paupers' Press. ISBN 0946650756
• Byrnes, Bernie C. (2006), Ian McEwan's 'Atonement' and 'Saturday', Nottingham, England: Paupers' Press. ISBN 094665090X
• Byrnes, Bernie C. (2008), McEwan's Only Childhood, Nottingham: Paupers' Press. ISBN 0946650942
• Childs, Peter (2005), The Fiction of Ian McEwan (Readers' Guides to Essential Criticism), Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1403919097
• D'Eliva, Gaetano, and Christopher Williams, (1986), La Nuova Letteratura Inglese Ian McEwan, Schena Editore.
• Dodou, Katherina (2009), Childhood Without Children: Ian McEwan and the Critical Study of the Child, Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University. ISBN 9789150621129
• Jensen, Morten H. (2005), The Effects of Conflict in the Novels of Ian McEwan – (Adobe Acrobat *.PDF document)
• Malcolm, David (2002), Understanding Ian McEwan, University of South Carolina. ISBN 1570034362
• Pedot, Richard (1999), Perversions Textuelles dans la Fiction d'Ian McEwan, Editions l'Harmattan.
• Reynolds, Margaret, and Jonathan Noakes, (2002), Ian McEwan: The Essential Guide, Vintage. ISBN 0099437554
• Roberts, Ryan (2010), Conversations with Ian McEwan, University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781604734201
• Rooney, Anne (2006), Atonement, York Notes. ISBN 1405835613
• Rooney, Anne (2010), Pissing in the Wind?, The New Humanist, May 2010
• Ryan, Kiernan (1994), Ian McEwan (Writers and Their Work), Northcote House. ISBN 074630742X
• Slay Jr., Jack (1996), Ian McEwan (Twayne's English Authors Series), Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0805745785
• Williams, Christopher (1993), Template:PDFlink, Biblioteca della Ricerca, Schena Editore. – (Adobe Acrobat *.PDF document)

External links

• McEwan Official website
• Official blog
• Guardian Books profile 22 July 2008
• The New Yorker article 23 February 2009
• Interview with McEwan. BBC Video (30 mins)
• Powells.com interview
• Salon.com interview 1998
• "Ian McEwan, The Art of Fiction". Paris Review. Summer 2002 No. 173

Media

• Ian McEwan interview with Charlie Rose, 1 June 2007. (Video, 26 mins)
• Unedited interview with Professor Richard Dawkins
• Audio: Ian McEwan reading from On Chesil Beach at the 2007 Key West Literary Seminar