Ian McEwan

British novelist and author of short stories, screenplays, and other works.

• Born: June 21, 1948
• Place of Birth: Aldershot, England

Biography

Ian Russell McEwan (muhk-YEW-uhn) was born on June 21, 1948, in the military town of Aldershot (southern England) to Rose Lillian Violet (Moore) McEwan and David McEwan. His mother was a war widow with two children. His father, later to become a major, had joined the army in the face of the bleak employment situation in Glasgow. As a soldier’s son, Ian spent much of his early childhood at military outposts in Singapore and Libya. In an interview with Ian Hamilton, he remembered life in Africa with “very open air, a great deal of running free, swimming, exploring the coast and the desert.” At eleven, McEwan was sent to a state-owned British boarding school, Woolverstone Hall in Suffolk, where he stayed until 1966. Shy and quiet, he was a mediocre student unnoticed by teachers. In his late teens, however, he became competitive and developed a serious interest in English literature and the popular culture of the 1960s.

On completing his secondary education, McEwan went to London, where he read voraciously and worked as a garbage collector for Camden Council. He studied French and English literature at the University of Sussex and received his honors B.A. in 1970. The following year, he earned an M.A. in creative writing at the celebrated University of East Anglia, where he studied under novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson.

In 1972, McEwan’s short story “Homemade” was published in New American Review. The young author joined a somewhat disappointing hippie-trail trip to Afghanistan after his public debut. He spent time writing notes and teaching English as a second language in England. After successfully selling his short story “Disguises” to New American Review, McEwan was inspired to further work: “I wrote ‘Last Day of Summer’ and ‘Butterflies’ and ‘Solid Geometry’ on a wave of confidence,” he told Ian Hamilton.

McEwan settled in London in 1974. Two years later, he published his first collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, which received the Somerset Maugham Award. The collection, based on his M.A. thesis, explores the themes of childhood and adolescence, focusing on the intimate workings of the protagonists’ minds. The year 1976 also marked McEwan’s television debut, with the airing of the play Jack Flea’s Birthday Celebration on BBC-TV. McEwan’s second short-story collection, In Between the Sheets, was published in 1978. As in the case of First Love, Last Rites, critical response to the volume concentrated on the violently sexual content of the stories, neglecting the formal experimentation that had been the author’s primary concern. Thus, McEwan became labeled as the author of the morbid and the perverse, a classification that was to follow him throughout most of his career.

McEwan’s first novel, The Cement Garden, continued the mode of his short stories with its closely observed psychology, its fascination with childhood, and its macabre gothic mood. Following the success of The Cement Garden, the BBC accepted McEwan’s play Solid Geometry (adapted from his short story) but then rejected it shortly before the scheduled airing time, citing its “grotesque and bizarre sexual elements.” The following year, however, the BBC broadcasted McEwan’s successful drama The Imitation Game. A story of a young woman trying to find her way in the male world of World War II counterintelligence, The Imitation Game was a departure from McEwan’s earlier themes, a fact emphasized by critics who saw the socially conscious play as a turning point in McEwan’s literary career.

In 1981, McEwan’s second novel, The Comfort of Strangers, was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Inspired in part by McEwan’s 1978 summer trip to Venice with Penny Allen, and in part by the author’s enduring interest in the workings of the subconscious, the novel examines the power of sadomasochistic impulses in a Mediterranean setting. Because it suggests that individuals might desire humiliation and pain, the book angered many feminist readers who had previously praised McEwan for the more socially oriented Imitation Game. The Comfort of Strangers was adapted by Harold Pinter for a feature film, directed by Paul Schrader.

In 1982, McEwan married Penelope Ruth Allen, faith healer and meditation tutor. The couple had two sons, William, born in 1983, and Gregory, born in 1986. The year of William’s birth was a time of intense artistic development for McEwan. In February, the London Symphony Orchestra Chorus performed his oratory Or Shall We Die?, set to the music of Michael Berkeley. The London performance at Royal Festival Hall was followed by a performance at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1985. Or Shall We Die? deals with the specter of nuclear apocalypse, opposing the “manly” values of domination and aggression with the “womanly” desire for peace. Continuing his campaign against nuclear arms, McEwan went to the Soviet Union in 1987 as a delegate of the European Nuclear Disarmament (END). The year of the Or Shall We Die? premiere also brought the success of Ploughman’s Lunch, a Richard Eyere film based on McEwan’s screenplay. The film, a picture of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Britain during the Falkland Islands crisis, received the Evening Standard awards for best screenplay, best film, and best director. To top off the personal and professional successes of 1983, McEwan was named one of the twenty Best Young Novelists by Granta, alongside Martin Amis, Kazuo Ishiguro, Salman Rushdie, and Julian Barnes. In recognition of his achievements, McEwan received the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984.

McEwan’s next endeavor was a book for children, Rose Blanche, rewritten from a translation by Roberto Innocenti, author of the original Italian book. A children’s book coming from the author of Cement Garden was greeted with wariness, but the volume proved perfectly appropriate for its young audience. McEwan followed Rose Blanche with his third novel, The Child in Time, which won the Whitbread Prize for fiction. Set futuristically in the mid-1990s, the work combines McEwan’s interest in the human mind with broader social concerns. In 1988, McEwan turned once more to screenplay writing, adapting Timothy Mo’s novel Sour Sweet (1982) for a feature directed by Mike Newell. McEwan was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Sussex the following year.

In 1989, McEwan went to Berlin to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall. German themes appear in his two following novels: a spy thriller, The Innocent, and Black Dogs. The latter work was short-listed for the 1992 Booker Prize. Following the Booker nomination (second in his career), McEwan saw the American feature screening debut of The Good Son, based on his (Hollywood-edited) screenplay. Before returning to adult fiction, McEwan wrote his second book for children, The Daydreamer.

In 1994, McEwan divorced Allen following a year-long separation. In 1997, he married journalist Annalena McAfee, after which he settled in Oxford, while his wife chose to live in London. McEwan’s sixth novel, Enduring Love, was published in 1997, followed by the playful, Booker Prize-winning Amsterdam in 1998. Following the prestigious Booker Prize, McEwan received the Shakespeare Prize and was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

McEwan continued publishing successful works in the twenty-first century. In 2001, McEwan made the Booker shortlist once more with Atonement, whose historical and emotional scope caused critics to proclaim it his most ambitious work. His 2005 novel Saturday was influenced by Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Nutshell (2016) was influenced by Hamlet, and The Cockroach (2019) was influenced by Britain's exit from the European Union and Franz Kafka's novel The Metamorphosis (1915). Drawing further inspiration from culture and experience, Solar (2010) is a satirical take on climate change. The Children Act (2014) addresses religion's role in medical choices and consent, and Lessons (2022) depicts the long-term impact of abuse.

Ian McEwan is one of the most important authors to emerge from the “plate-glass university” generation that made its literary debut in the 1970s. Like his peers, he shows an acute awareness of the dark side of contemporary life, combining it with a close examination of the mind, rendered in a sparse, lucid style. He is a writer unafraid of change and experimentation whose works are awaited and greeted with excitement.

Author Works

Long Fiction:

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, 2004

On Chesil Beach, 2007

Solar, 2010

Sweet Tooth, 2012

The Children Act, 2014

Nutshell, 2016

Machines Like Me, 2019

The Cockroach, 2019

Lessons, 2022

Short Fiction:

First Love, Last Rites, 1975

In Between the Sheets, 1978

The Short Stories, 1995

My Purple Scented Novel, 2018

Drama:

Or Shall We Die?, pr., pb. 1983 (oratorio; music by Michael Berkeley)

Screenplays:

The Ploughman’s Lunch, 1983

Soursweet, 1989 (adaptation of Timothy Mo’s novel Sour Sweet)

The Good Son, 1993 (adaptation of Joseph Ruben’s novel)

The Innocent, 1995 (adaptation of his novel)

On Chesil Beach, 2017

The Children Act, 2017

Teleplays:

Jack Flea’s Birthday Celebration, 1976

The Imitation Game, 1980

The Imitation Game: Three Plays for Television, 1981 (also known as The Imitation Game, and Other Plays, 1981)

The Last Day of Summer, 1983 (adaptation of his short story)

Radio Play:

Conversation with a Cupboardman, 1975 (adaptation of his short story)

Children’s/Young Adult Literature:

Rose Blanche, 1985 (rewritten from translation of original by Roberto Innocenti)

The Daydreamer, 1994

Bibliography

Begley, Adam. "'Lessons' Is Ian McEwan's Anti-Memoir." Atlantic, 9 Sept. 2022, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/10/ian-mcewan-lessons-book-interview/671250. Accessed 20 July 2024.

Broughton, Lynda, “Portrait of the Subject as a Young Man: The Construction of Masculinity Ironized in ‘Male’ Fiction.” Subjectivity and Literature from the Romantics to the Present Day. New York: Pinter, 1991.

Byrnes, Christina. “Ian McEwan: Pornographer or Prophet?” Contemporary Review 266, no. 1553 (June, 1995): 320-323.

Cochran, Angus R. B. “Ian McEwan.” In British Writers: Supplement IV, edited by George Stade. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1996.

Courtney, Hannah. “Narrative Temporality and Slowed Scene: The Interaction of Event and Thought Representation in Ian McEwan’s Fiction.” Narrative vol. 21, no. 2, 2013, pp. 180–97. Academic Search Complete, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=86992685&site=eds-live. Accessed 31 Mar. 2017.

Diemert, Brian. "Ian McEwan." The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature, 2020, pp. 209-217. doi.org/10.1002/9781118902264.ch21.

Groes, Sebastian, editor. Ian McEwan: Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Continuum, 2009. direct=true&db=e700xna&AN=344134&site=eds-live. Accessed 31 Mar. 2017.

Hanson, Claire. Short Stories and Short Fictions, 1880-1980. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985.

Księżopolska, Irena. Ian McEwan: Subversive Readings, Informed Misreadings. Taylor & Francis, 2024.

Ryan, Kiernan. Ian McEwan. Plymouth, England: Northcote House, 1994.

Slay, Jack. Ian McEwan. New York: Twayne, 1996.

Vannatta, Dennis. The English Short Story, 1945-1980: A Critical History. New York: Twayne, 1985.