Comfort of Strangers

Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of nineteen novels and two short story collections. 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; Machines Like Me; and Lessons. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.

"Haunting and compelling" The Times "McEwan, that master of the taciturn macabre, so organises his narrative that, without insisting anything, every turn and glimpse is another tightening of the noose" Observer "As always, McEwan manages his own idiom with remarkable grace and inventiveness; his characters are at home in their dreams and so is he" Guardian "Has you in its stranglehold from the first page to the last. McEwan has honed his prose style (always admirably spare) to tell his tale, and with all the skill of an accomplished torturer, he throws the occasional crumbs of comfort, as the tension becomes unbearable, only to snatch them away within moments" Listener "The Maestro" New Statesman