The Innocent

Author:   Ian McEwan
Publisher:   Vintage Publishing
Edition:   New edition
ISBN:  

9780099277095


Pages:   240
Publication Date:   03 September 1998
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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The Innocent


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Full Product Details

Author:   Ian McEwan
Publisher:   Vintage Publishing
Imprint:   Vintage
Edition:   New edition
Dimensions:   Width: 12.90cm , Height: 1.50cm , Length: 19.80cm
Weight:   0.196kg
ISBN:  

9780099277095


ISBN 10:   0099277093
Pages:   240
Publication Date:   03 September 1998
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

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Reviews

To call The Innocent a spy novel would be like calling Lord of the Flies a boy's adventure yarn...it ensure McEwan's major status Sunday Times 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 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 -- Jonathan Coe Guardian Generous in scale, simple in its hideous impact...Ironically, he has celebrated the obsequies of the East-West spy thriller by writing one of the subtlest Mail on Sunday Deft, taut fiction... Many English writers have been compared to Evelyn Waugh, often wrongly, but this book can stand with the master's best The Times


McEwan's latest - his best shot at a popular novel - is something of a departure from his previous work (The Child in Time, The Comfort of Strangers, etc.), but no less skillful in design or execution. Part romance, part murder mystery, and part spy intrigue, this cool tale of postwar Berlin relies on a number of historical and dramatic ironies for its punch. As the Cold War begins to freeze, Leonard Marnham, a shy and dithering young electrician from England, is assigned to work on a top-secret, Anglo-American project in West Berlin. With no experience in intelligence, the clumsy, reticent Brit is soon engulfed in a world of secrecy. Bob Glass, Leonard's gruff Yank superior, considers the English inept and sloppy, incapable of seeing secrecy as the essence of individuality. For over a year, they have to work together on a massive piece of spying - the creation of an underground tunnel into the Russian sector that will allow the CIA and MI6 to tap master phonelines. As Leonard and Glass develop an improbable friendship, neither knows that the Russians have been on to them since the beginning. Meanwhile, Leonard - the most obvious innocent here - loses his virginity to a 30-year-old German woman, Maria Eckdorf, and begins a relationship that must also be shrouded in secrecy. Just as they settle into the miserable ordinariness of living together, they're visited by Maria's ex-husband, a violent drank, whom Leonard kills in self. defense. Fearing disbelief, the young couple attempt to cover up their crime, of which they're technically innocent. But the difficulties of dumping a hacked-up body lead Leonard back to his workplace, and also cause him to betray the project. When the Russians crash through the tunnel - for reasons unrelated to Leonard's conscious treason - he's eventually called home, but his once-pure love for Maria has been irreparably defiled. A coda, set 30 years later, solves many of the remaining mysteries, and suggests the depth of innocence and false knowledge at play back in the days of high-spying. McEwan's clinical account of dismemberment reminds us of the dark imagination displayed in his other work - it's also bound to turn off the wider audience who would otherwise enjoy this clean and clever fiction. (Kirkus Reviews)


In part a thriller, in which the machinations of a top-secret Cold War telephone-tapping operation (the real-life 1955 Operation Gold in Berlin) are investigated and explained, and in part a murder/romance - boy meets girl, boy meets girl's ex-husband, ex-husband meets a graphically sticky end. Concise and controlled; a masterly, evocative page-turner. (Kirkus UK)


Never less than wholly entertaining. -- The Wall Street Journal <br><br> Deft, taut fiction. . . . Many English writers have been compared to Evelyn Waugh, often wrongly, but this book can stand with the master's best. -- Time <br><br> So exhaustively suspenseful that it should be devoured at one sitting. . . . McEwan fuses a spy-novel plot with themes as venerable as the myth of Adam and Eve. -- Newsweek <br><br> Has the spooky, crooked-angled, danger-around-every-corner feeling of a Carol Reid film. It reminded me often of The Third Man and that is no mean feat. --Jonathan Carroll, The Washington Post Book World <br><br> Powerful and disturbing . . . a tour de force. -- The New York Times


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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