Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan
	Paris, 2011
Born	Ian Russell McEwan; 21 June 1948 (age 75); Aldershot, England, UK
Occupation	Author, screenwriter
Nationality	British
Period	1975–present
Genre	Recent history
Spouse	Penny Allen; (m. 1982–1995, divorced); Annalena McAfee (m. 1997–)
Website
	www.ianmcewan.com

Ian Russell McEwan^[1] CH, CBE, FRSA, FRSL (born 21 June 1948), is an English novelist (who is also called "Ian Macabre" because of the type of his early work).

Biography[change | change source]

McEwan was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, England and spent much of his childhood in the Far East, Germany and North Africa where his father, an officer in the army, was posted. He was educated at the University of Sussex and the University of East Anglia, where he was the first graduate of Malcolm Bradbury's pioneering creative writing course.

He has been married twice. His second wife, Annalena McAfee, is the editor of the Guardian's Review section.

In March and April 2004, just months after the British government had invited him to a dinner with First Lady of the United States Laura Bush, McEwan was denied entry into the United States by the United States Department of Homeland Security for not having the proper visa for earning a living (McEwan was preparing to give a series of paid lectures). Only after several days and publicity in the British press was McEwan admitted because, as he said a customs official had told him, "We still do not want to let you in, but this is attracting a lot of unfavourable publicity."

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 was awarded a CBE in 2000.

Works[change | change source]

His first published work was the collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites (1975), which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976.

The Cement Garden (1978) and Black Dogs (1992) were his early novels.

His 1997 novel, Enduring Love, about a person with de Clerambault's syndrome, is regarded by many as a masterpiece, though Atonement has received equally high acclaim.

In 1998, he was controversially awarded the Booker Prize for his novella, Amsterdam.

His 2005 novel, Saturday, follows an especially eventful day in the life of a neurosurgeon. Mr Henry Perowne, the main character, lives in a house on a square in central London where McEwan himself lives after relocating from Oxford.

The 2007 novel, On Chesil Beach, was a short novel about one couple in England and how they experience love and sexuality in the early 1960s. The novel was on the short list of possible Booker Prize winners.

His most recent novel, Solar, is a comedy. A fictional Nobel Prize winning physicist with a disorganized personal life is the main character.