A symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness that provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from the acclaimed Booker Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author.
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood friend. But Briony’ s incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives.
As it follows that crime’s repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.
“A beautiful and majestic fictional panorama.” —John Updike, The New Yorker
“A tour de force.... Every bit as affecting as it is gripping.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“[Atonement] hauls a defining part of the British literary tradition up to and into the 21st century.” —The Guardian
“McEwan is one of the most gifted literary storytellers alive.... [Atonement] implants in the memory a living, flaming presence.” —James Wood, The New Republic
