Long description
In this rich novel by the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel "Amsterdam, " a young girl unwittingly tells a tale that turns her family upside down. Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class, "Atonement" is at its center a profound--and profoundly moving--exploration of shame and forgiveness, of atonement and the difficulty of absolution.
Review
The engrossing new novel by the winner of the 1998 Booker Prize hauls a defining part of the British literary tradition up to and into the 21st century. -Geoff Dyer, The Guardian
It is rare for a critic to feel justified in using the word masterpiece, but Ian McEwan's new book really deserves to be called one... Atonement is a work of astonishing depth and humanity... This novel really is worthy of the Booker. -The Economist
The narrative, as always with McEwan, smoulders with slow-burning menace. the book is magically readable and never has McEwan shown himself to be more in sympathy with the vulnerability of the human heart. -The Sunday Times
McEwan is a consistently entertaining storyteller, giving good weight right up until the final page. Even by his exacting standards his latest novel is extraordinary. His trademark sentences of sustained eloquence and delicacy, which have sometimes over-rationalized the evocation of emotion, strike a deeper resonance in Atonement, -The Times