Title

The Innocent

Ian McEwan

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Published by Vintage, part of Vintage Publishing

Format: Paperback

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Details

EAN: 9780099277095
Published: 3 Nov 2005

About the book

Synopsis

The setting is Berlin. Into this divided city, wrenched between East and West, between past and present; comes twenty-five-year-old Leonard Marnham, assigned to a British-American surveillance team.Though only a pawn in an international plot that is never fully revealed to him, Leonard uses his secret work to escape the bonds of his ordinary life - and to lose his unwanted innocence. The promise of his new life begins to be fulfilled as Leonard becomes a crucial part of the surveillance team, while simultaneously being initiated into a new world of love and sex by Maria, a beautiful young German woman. It is a promise that turns to horror in the course of one terrible evening - a night when Leonard Marnham learns just how much of his innocence he's willing to shed.

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What the critics say

It's the most tightly plotted of Ian McEwan's novels, and to argue properly for its excellence would involve showing how the political and emotional themes are inseparable from its narrative ingenuity, the patterns of revelation and about-turn which mark its final pages.
- Guardian

The sheer cleverness of the book is dazzling, and only fully to be appreciated as you turn the last page: but then cleverness is a real virtue here, the best guide possible to the questionable territory between innocence and whatever comes after
- London Review of Books

To call The Innocent a spy novel would be like calling Lord of the Flies a boy's adventure yarn - the plot crackles like thin ice with dread and suspense - it ensure McEwan's major status
- Sunday Times

By this author

About the Author

Ian McEwan has written two collection of short stories: First Love, Last Rites and In Between The Sheets, and twelve novels: The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers, The Child In Time, The Innocent, Black Dogs, The Daydreamer, Enduring Love, Amsterdam, Atonement, Saturday, On Chesil Beach and Solar. He won the 1998 Booker Prize for his novel Amsterdam.He has also written several film scripts, including The Imitation Game,The Ploughman's Lunch, Sour Sweet, The Good Son and The Innocent.