Ian McEwan

Thursday, 7:30 p.m., April 1, 2004

Distinguished British novelist and screenwriter Ian McEwan is the author of Atonement (2001), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. John Updike called it "A beautiful and majestic fictional panorama." McEwan is the author of more than ten books, including Amsterdam (1998), winner of the Booker Prize; The Child in Time (1987), winner of the Whitbread Award; as well as the story collection, First Love, Last Rites (1975), winner of the Somerset Maugham Award. "His books have a natural 45-degree tilt, leaning forward, through a fog of mounting unease, toward claret-dark revelation." –The New York Times.