Ian McEwan

for admirers of the writer talent!!!!!!! McEwan was born in Aldershot in England and spent much of his childhood in East Asia, Germany and North Africa, where his army officer father was posted. He was educated at Woolverstone Hall School, the University of Sussex and the University of East Anglia, where he was the first graduate of Malcolm Bradbury's pioneering creative writing course. McEwan 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. Ian McEwan is also a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association. He was awarded a CBE in 2000. His first published work was a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites (1975), which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976. The Cement Garden (1978) and The Comfort of Strangers (1981) were his two earliest novels. The nature of these works caused him to be nicknamed "Ian Macabre". These were followed by three novels of some success in the 1980s and early 1990s. His 1997 novel, Enduring Love, about a person with de Clerambault's syndrome, is regarded by many as a masterpiece, though it was not shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 1998, he was awarded the Booker Prize for his novel Amsterdam. His next novel, Atonement, received considerable high acclaim; Time Magazine named it the best novel of 2002, and it was short-listed for the Booker Prize. His next work, Saturday, follows an especially eventful day in the life of a successful neurosurgeon. Henry Perowne, the main character, lives in a house on a well known square in central London, where McEwan now lives after having relocated from Oxford. Saturday won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for 2005. His most recent novel, On Chesil Beach, was shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize. McEwan has also written a number of produced screenplays, a stage play, children's fiction, and an oratorio. As of August 2007 McEwan is writing the libretto to an opera called "For You", which tells the story of a composer whose sexual and professional prowess have passed their peak. It is being composed by Michael Berkeley and is set to be performed in 2008. Amsterdam is a 1998 novel by British writer Ian McEwan. It is a morality tale revolving around a newspaper editor and a composer. McEwan was awarded the Booker Prize for the novel. The book begins with the funeral of Molly Lane. Guests at the funeral include: Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary; Vernon Halliday, a newspaper editor; and eminent composer Clive Linley. These three share certain attributes; each has a very high opinion of himself, each was at some time Molly's lover, and each regards the dead woman's husband George, with a mixture of amusement and contempt. During the course of the book Clive and Vernon each face a difficult moral decision. The consequences of their decisions, and a pact made between them, leads them both to Amsterdam where the novel's dénouement plays out.