Ian McEwan interview: How he wrote the Booker-winning Amsterdam
25 years after winning the Booker for Amsterdam, Ian McEwan revisits his journals and talks about the inspirations behind the book, in an exclusive interview
Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan, born in Aldershot, England, is a critically acclaimed author and winner of the Booker Prize 1998
His collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the 1975 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 Booker Prize 1998; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; Nutshell; and Machines Like Me, which was a number-one bestseller. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.
He was also shortlisted, for his entire body of work, for The Man Booker International Prize 2005 and 2007.
In June 2023 he became a Companion of Honour after being recognised in the King’s first official birthday honours.
Winner The Booker Prize 1998
- By
- Ian McEwan
- Published by
- Jonathan Cape
A fragile friendship descends into hatred and revenge, in Ian McEwan’s darkly humorous 1998 Booker Prize-winning novel.
Other nominated books
An English couple on holiday encounter an unsettling stranger in Ian McEwan’s chilling psychological thriller about love, violence and obsession.
Ian McEwan’s brooding and occasionally sinister novel hints at how personal relationships can be beset by demons unleashed in wider human conflict.
A young girl’s imagination runs riot with far-reaching and devastating consequences, in Ian McEwan’s masterpiece of metafiction.
A masterful Ian McEwan explores the incredible fragility of existence, as he charts one hugely eventful day in the life of a middle-aged neurosurgeon.
Ian McEwan’s devastating novel about ways in which the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.
