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Ian McEwan’s first book, First Love, Last Rites (1975), was a collection of stories about incest, child abuse and murder, and it earned him the nickname “Ian Macabre” and the Somerset Maugham Award. Twenty-three years later he won the Booker Prize for Amsterdam. He has been shortlisted for the Booker four other times, including for Atonement (2001), which became a film nominated for the Oscar for best picture. His novels often turn on a single moment — a balloon accident, a misread letter, a wedding night — and follow what it does to the people involved. This guide covers his 13 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 13 key books · 1975–2025 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Ian McEwan’s best-known books are Atonement (2001), Amsterdam (1998), which won the Booker Prize, Enduring Love (1997), On Chesil Beach (2007) and Lessons (2022). Start with Atonement. Below are his 13 key books in order, and the rest of his work grouped by kind.
Where to Start with Ian McEwan
If you want his defining novel
→ Atonement (2001) — one lie in the summer of 1935 and what follows.
If you want something short
→ On Chesil Beach (2007) — one wedding night in 1962, in under 200 pages.
If you want a gripping story with ideas
→ Enduring Love (1997) — a balloon accident and a stalker.
If you want his early, darker work
→ First Love, Last Rites (1975) — the stories that made his name.
13 Ian McEwan Books, in Order
First Love, Last Rites
His first book: eight stories, many told by adolescents, about sex, cruelty and isolation, including incest in “Homemade”. The subject matter shocked some reviewers and gave him the nickname “Ian Macabre”. It won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976.
The Cement Garden
His first novel. After their father dies and then their mother, four children hide her body in a trunk of cement in the cellar so they will not be split up, and live on alone in the house through a hot summer. It is narrated by the teenage son, Jack. Andrew Birkin filmed it in 1993.
The Child in Time
Stephen Lewis, a writer of children’s books, looks away for a moment in a supermarket and his three-year-old daughter Kate is gone. The novel follows his grief and his marriage over the following years, in a Britain of the near future. It won the Whitbread Novel Award, and the BBC adapted it in 2017 with Benedict Cumberbatch.
Enduring Love
A hot-air balloon accident in the Chiltern Hills brings together the science writer Joe Rose and a stranger, Jed Parry, who becomes convinced that Joe loves him and begins to stalk him. The novel draws on de Clérambault’s syndrome and includes a fictional case report in an appendix. It was filmed in 2004.
Amsterdam
Two old friends, the composer Clive Linley and the newspaper editor Vernon Halliday, meet at the funeral of their former lover Molly Lane and make a pact with each other. A short, dark comedy about vanity and ambition in 1990s London that ends, as the title says, in Amsterdam. It won the 1998 Booker Prize.
Atonement
On a hot day in 1935 at her family’s country house, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis misreads what she sees between her sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner, the cleaner’s son, and accuses Robbie of a crime he did not commit. The novel follows the consequences through Dunkirk and the London hospitals of 1940 to 1999. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in the US. Joe Wright filmed it in 2007.
Saturday
One day in the life of Henry Perowne, a London neurosurgeon: 15 February 2003, the day of the mass march against the Iraq war. A minor car accident brings him into conflict with a man called Baxter, and the day ends with violence in his own home. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
On Chesil Beach
In July 1962 Edward and Florence, both in their early twenties and both virgins, sit down to dinner in a hotel on the Dorset coast on their wedding night. Over a few hours, and what neither can say, their marriage is decided. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and McEwan wrote the screenplay for the 2017 film with Saoirse Ronan.
Sweet Tooth
In the early 1970s Serena Frome, a Cambridge maths graduate and avid reader, is recruited by MI5 for an operation that secretly funds writers whose views suit the government, and falls for the one she is assigned, Tom Haley. The ending turns the book into a story about who has been writing it.
The Children Act
Fiona Maye, a High Court judge in the family division, must decide whether a hospital may give a blood transfusion to Adam Henry, a seventeen-year-old Jehovah’s Witness who refuses it, while her own marriage is coming apart. McEwan adapted it for the 2017 film with Emma Thompson.
Machines Like Me
An alternative London in 1982, in which Britain has lost the Falklands War and Alan Turing is alive and has driven computing far ahead. Charlie spends his inheritance on Adam, one of the first synthetic humans, and he, his neighbour Miranda and Adam form a triangle that tests what a machine with a conscience would do.
Lessons
The life of Roland Baines from the Suez crisis to the pandemic: abused by his piano teacher as a boy at boarding school, then left alone with their baby son when his wife walks out to become a novelist. It is his longest book and draws on parts of his own life, including a childhood in Libya and a state boarding school.
What We Can Know
In 2119, in a Britain mostly under water, the scholar Thomas Metcalfe searches for a lost poem, “A Corona for Vivien”, which the poet Francis Blundy read aloud at a dinner party in 2014. The second half gives the present-day story of Vivien, Blundy’s wife, and shows where Metcalfe’s reconstruction goes wrong.
In What Order to Read Ian McEwan
None of McEwan’s books are connected, so you can start anywhere. Publication order does show a clear change: the early stories and short novels are claustrophobic and shocking, while from The Child in Time on the books get bigger, more political and more concerned with how people judge what happened to them.
If you read only one, read Atonement. After that, On Chesil Beach and Amsterdam are both short, and Lessons shows him taking on a whole life.
A reading path
1. Atonement (2001)
2. On Chesil Beach (2007)
3. Enduring Love (1997)
4. The Cement Garden (1978)
5. Lessons (2022)
Everything Else Ian McEwan Published
Beyond the 13 key books: 15 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other novels
5
5 books · 1981–2016
- 1981The Comfort of StrangersBooker shortlist
- 1990The InnocentBerlin, 1955
- 1992Black DogsBooker shortlist
- 2010Solara Nobel-winning physicist and climate change
- 2016NutshellHamlet retold by an unborn child
Stories and novellas
3
3 books · 1978–2019
- 1978In Between the Sheetshis second story collection
- 2018My Purple Scented Novela short story
- 2019The Cockroacha short satire on Brexit
Children’s books
2
2 books · 1985–1994
- 1985Rose Blanche
- 1994The Daydreamer
Plays, screenplays and libretti
4
4 books · 1981–2008
- 1981The Imitation Gamethree plays for television
- 1983Or Shall We Die?oratorio text, music by Michael Berkeley
- 1985The Ploughman’s Lunchscreenplay
- 2008For Youopera libretto, music by Michael Berkeley
Nonfiction
1
1 book · 2019
- 2019Sciencea short essay
The years · 1948–2025
Quick facts about Ian McEwan
- Known for
- Precise, unsettling novels in which one moment — an accident, a lie, a wedding night — changes lives, moving from early shock fiction to large books about history, science and guilt.
- 1948
- Born in Aldershot, Hampshire
- 1975
- First Love, Last Rites
- 2001
- Atonement
- 2007
- Atonement on film
- 2025
- What We Can Know
- Born
- 21 June 1948, Aldershot, Hampshire
- Education
- University of Sussex; MA at the University of East Anglia
- Booker Prize
- Won for Amsterdam (1998); shortlisted for four other novels
- Other prizes
- Somerset Maugham Award (1976), Whitbread Novel Award (1987), James Tait Black Memorial Prize (2005), Jerusalem Prize (2011)
- Honours
- CBE, 2000
- Nickname
- “Ian Macabre”, for his early fiction
The red mark is 2001: Atonement, his novel of a lie told in 1935.
How Ian McEwan Writes: The Moment Everything Turns
McEwan builds many of his novels around a single event, described in slow, exact detail: the balloon that opens Enduring Love, the fountain scene in Atonement, the dinner in On Chesil Beach. The rest of the book follows the consequences, often over decades. He is precise about the physical world, and he likes his characters to have expert jobs, such as a neurosurgeon, a judge or a composer, which he researches closely.
He is interested in science and reason, and often sets them against faith, obsession or feeling: the rationalist Joe against Jed Parry, the judge against a religious family, the android Adam against human lies. He also returns to the question of storytelling itself. Atonement and Sweet Tooth both end by showing who has been telling the story, and why.
The early books, up to The Comfort of Strangers, are short and shocking, which is where the nickname “Ian Macabre” came from. From the late 1980s his work opens out into history and politics, from the Cold War in The Innocent to the Iraq war march in Saturday and Brexit in The Cockroach.
Frequently asked questions about Ian McEwan’s books
How many books has Ian McEwan written?
Seventeen novels, from The Cement Garden (1978) to What We Can Know (2025), plus two story collections, short fiction, children’s books, scripts and an essay. This page lists 28: the 13 key books and 15 more in the bibliography.
What are Ian McEwan’s books in order?
His key books in order: First Love, Last Rites (1975), The Cement Garden (1978), The Child in Time (1987), Enduring Love (1997), Amsterdam (1998), Atonement (2001), Saturday (2005), On Chesil Beach (2007), Sweet Tooth (2012), The Children Act (2014), Machines Like Me (2019), Lessons (2022) and What We Can Know (2025).
Where should I start with Ian McEwan?
Atonement is the usual starting point and his best-known book. If you want something shorter, On Chesil Beach or Amsterdam can each be read in an evening or two.
What is Ian McEwan’s most famous book?
Atonement (2001), helped by Joe Wright’s 2007 film with Keira Knightley, James McAvoy and Saoirse Ronan, which was nominated for the Oscar for best picture.
Did Ian McEwan win the Booker Prize?
Yes, once, in 1998 for Amsterdam. He was also shortlisted for The Comfort of Strangers (1981), Black Dogs (1992), Atonement (2001) and On Chesil Beach (2007).
Was Ian McEwan accused of plagiarism?
In 2006 critics pointed out that passages in Atonement about wartime nursing closely echoed No Time for Romance (1977), the memoir of the nurse and novelist Lucilla Andrews. McEwan said he had used the memoir as a source, acknowledged in the novel, and denied plagiarism; several prominent writers publicly defended him.
Which Ian McEwan books have been made into films?
Among them The Cement Garden (1993), Enduring Love (2004), Atonement (2007), On Chesil Beach (2017) and The Children Act (2017), the last two with screenplays by McEwan himself. The BBC adapted The Child in Time in 2017.
Why is Ian McEwan called Ian Macabre?
Because of his early fiction: First Love, Last Rites, In Between the Sheets and The Cement Garden dealt with incest, child abuse and murder, and critics gave him the nickname in the 1970s.
What is Ian McEwan’s latest book?
His latest novel is What We Can Know (2025), set partly in 2119. A collection of his essays and speeches, Between Books, has been announced by Knopf for May 2027.
Is Ian McEwan still alive?
Yes. He was born on 21 June 1948 in Aldershot, Hampshire, and published What We Can Know in 2025.
What is What We Can Know by Ian McEwan about?
What We Can Know is set in 2119, in a Britain whose lowlands have been flooded by rising seas. Tom Metcalfe, a scholar at the University of the South Downs, goes looking for a great poem that was read aloud once at a party in 2014 and then lost. His search turns up a story of tangled love and a brutal crime. McEwan has called the book science fiction “without the science”.
When was What We Can Know released?
What We Can Know came out in the UK on 18 September 2025 from Jonathan Cape. Knopf published it in the US on 23 September 2025. It is McEwan’s 18th novel.
What do reviews say about What We Can Know?
Reviews of What We Can Know were largely positive. Dwight Garner in The New York Times called it the best thing McEwan had written in ages, and Kirkus Reviews called it a philosophically charged tour de force. In The Guardian, Kevin Power read it as a novel about liberalism after Brexit and the moral weight of global catastrophe.
Is What We Can Know out in paperback?
Yes, as of October 2026. Vintage published the UK paperback on 18 June 2026, and the US paperback came out on 16 June 2026.
Is there an audiobook of What We Can Know?
Yes. Penguin Audio published the unabridged audiobook in 2025, read by David Rintoul and Rachel Bavidge.
Who wrote Atonement?
Ian McEwan wrote Atonement. Jonathan Cape published it in the UK in 2001, and the first US edition appeared in April 2002. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Time named it the best novel of 2002.
What is Atonement by Ian McEwan about?
On a summer’s day in 1935, 13-year-old Briony Tallis misreads what passes between her sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner, the housekeeper’s son. She then wrongly accuses Robbie of a crime, and he is sent to prison. The novel follows the fallout into the Second World War, including the retreat to Dunkirk and wartime nursing in London. It ends in 1999 with Briony, by then an elderly novelist, revealing how much of the story she has told is her own attempt at atonement.
What inspired Ian McEwan to write Atonement?
McEwan has said Atonement was directly influenced by L. P. Hartley’s The Go-Between. For the wartime nursing scenes he drew on Lucilla Andrews’s 1977 memoir No Time for Romance, which he credited in the book’s acknowledgements.
Is Lessons by Ian McEwan autobiographical?
Partly. McEwan has called Roland Baines, the novel’s hero, almost an alter ego: a “life that I might have had”. Roland shares much of his background, including a father in the army, a childhood in North Africa, boarding school in England and a brother he only found out about later in life. The life story itself is invented.
Where does Ian McEwan live?
Ian McEwan lives in London.
Who is Ian McEwan?
Ian McEwan is a British novelist and screenwriter, born in Aldershot, Hampshire, in 1948. He is best known for Atonement, Enduring Love, Saturday and the Booker-winning Amsterdam. He was made a CBE in 2000 and a Companion of Honour in 2023.
What is Am Strand by Ian McEwan?
Am Strand is the German title of On Chesil Beach, McEwan’s 2007 novella. Diogenes published it in 2007 in a translation by Bernhard Robben. The 2017 film adaptation was also released in Germany as Am Strand, on 21 June 2018.
Footnotes
- Ian McEwan — Wikipedia
- On the trail of a missing masterpiece: What We Can Know reviewed — The Spectator
- New novel by Ian McEwan coming in the fall — Kirkus Reviews
- Atonement takes book critics award for fiction — American Booksellers Association
- The Children Act (film) — Wikipedia
- Ian McEwan’s ‘ragbag’ of essays becomes ‘Between Books’ — AP via AJC, 2026
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.”
— Ian McEwan, “Only love and then oblivion”, The Guardian (15 September 2001)
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