Awards

• Short-listed for Booker Prize for Fiction 1992
• Shortlisted for Booker Prize for Fiction 1992.

Overview

Re-jacketed in stunning new series style, Black Dogs is a dark and brooding masterpiece from Booker prize-winning, Sunday Times-bestselling Ian McEwan. Black Dogs is a dark and brooding masterpiece from Booker-prize winning Sunday Times bestselling author Ian McEwan. In 1946, June and Bernard set off on their honeymoon. Fired by their ideals and passion for one another, they had planned an idyllic holiday, but in France they witness an event that alters the course of their lives entirely. Forty years on, their son-in-law is trying to uncover the cause of their estrangement and is led back to this moment on honeymoon and an experience of such darkness it was to wrench the couple apart. 'Powerful... Unforgettable' Sunday Telegraph 'Thoughtful and compassionate' London Review of Books

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9780099277088

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Reviews

Powerful... Unforgettable * Sunday Telegraph * His best yet, which I should make clear is saying a great deal * Observer * Brilliant...a meditation on the intoxications of violence and the redemptive power of love * New Yorker * Superbly evocative prose... The novel's vision of Europe is acute and alive, vivid in its moral complexities * New York Times Book Review * Compassionate without resorting to sentimentality, clever without ever losing its honesty, an undisguised novel of ideas which is also Ian McEwan's most human work * Times Literary Supplement *

Powerful... Unforgettable * Sunday Telegraph * His best yet, which I should make clear is saying a great deal * Observer * Brilliant...a meditation on the intoxications of violence and the redemptive power of love * New Yorker * Superbly evocative prose... The novel's vision of Europe is acute and alive, vivid in its moral complexities * New York Times Book Review * Compassionate without resorting to sentimentality, clever without ever losing its honesty, an undisguised novel of ideas which is also Ian McEwan's most human work * Times Literary Supplement *

As in McEwan's last novel, The Innocent (1990), the Berlin Wall plays an important symbolic role in this fictional meditation on evil - a pseudo-memoir written from a post-cold-war perspective. The narrator, orphaned in his youth, has always been infatuated with his friends' parents and with the comfort and the conventions of his elders. After a lifetime of leaving places and people, he has now, in his 30s, found home in his own marriage and family. And he's particularly fascinated by his in-laws, a somewhat glamorous couple who split up after a few years of marriage, despite their undying love for each other. What came between them is nothing less than the defining issue of the century. While both Bernard and June Tremaine shared a youthful commitment to communism, Bernard maintains his materialistic view of things - even after he abandons the Party for mainstream Labour politics and a career as a popular pundit. June, on the other hand, rejects rationalism after a singular, profound incident in southern France while on her honeymoon in the late 40's. There, her confrontation with evil - manifest in some terrifying dogs left by the occupying Nazis - leads to her spiritual awakening and a life dedicated to meditation. The narrator, who professes disinterest ( I had no attachments, I believed in nothing ), nevertheless stacks things in June's favor. After all, the Berlin Wall is a testament to the very ideas clung to by Bernard. Despite his professed doubt, the narrator's own haunting forces him to recognize the power of June's contention that evil lurks within us all. McEwan explores the personal consequences of political ideas in this remarkably precise little novel. His lapidary prose neatly disguises his search for transcendence. (Kirkus Reviews)

Superbly evocative prose... The novel's vision of Europe is acute and alive, vivid in its moral complexities New York Times Book Review Brilliant...a meditation on the intoxications of violence and the redemptive power of love New Yorker Compassionate without resorting to sentimentality, clever without ever losing its honesty, an undisguised novel of ideas which is also Ian McEwan's most human work Times Literary Supplement Powerful... Unforgettable Sunday Telegraph

Author Information

Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen books. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; and Nutshell, which was a Number One bestseller. Atonement and Enduring Love have both been turned into award-winning films, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach are in production and set for release this year, and filming is currently underway for a BBC TV adaptation of The Child in Time.

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