Atonement: A Novel

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, May 20, 2003 - Fiction - 368 pages
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness that provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from the acclaimed Booker Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author.

On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood friend. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives.

As it follows that crime’s repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.

Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
3
Section 2
17
Section 3
30
Section 4
40
Section 5
52
Section 6
60
Section 7
68
Section 8
73
Section 11
117
Section 12
136
Section 13
146
Section 14
162
Section 15
179
Section 16
253
Section 17
333
Section 18
353

Section 9
90
Section 10
106
Section 19
355
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About the author (2003)

IAN McEWAN is the critically acclaimed author of many novels and two collections of short stories. 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. He was awarded a CBE in 2000.

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