Saturday - by Ian McEwan (Paperback)

About the Book

From the pen of a master--the #1 bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of "Atonement"--comes a "cerebral novel about an ominous day seen through the eyes of Henry Perowne, a reflective neurosurgeon whose comfortable life is shaken following a run-in with a street thug" ("Publishers Weekly").

Book Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - The Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement follows an ordinary man through a Saturday whose high promise gradually turns nightmarish in this "dazzling [and] powerful" novel (The New York Times).

Henry Perowne--a neurosurgeon, urbane, privileged, deeply in love with his wife and grown-up children--plans to play a game of squash, visit his elderly mother, and cook dinner for his family. But after a minor traffic accident leads to an unsettling confrontation, Perowne must set aside his plans and summon a strength greater than he knew he had in order to preserve the life that is dear to him.

Review Quotes

"Dazzling.... Powerful.... McEwan has shown how we ... live today." --The New York Times

"Finely wrought and shimmering with intelligence." --The New York Times Book Review

"McEwan is supremely gifted.... Saturday is a tightly wound tour de force." --The Washington Post Book World

"This extraordinary book is not a political novel. It is a novel about consciousness that illuminates the sources of politics." --The Nation

"Saturday is an exemplary novel, engrossing and sustained. It is undoubtedly McEwan's best." --The Spectator

"Read the last 100 pages at one sitting-the pace and the thrill allow it.... Exhilarating." --Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Virtuosic.... Brilliantly macabre and suspenseful.... [A] fine novel." --The Wall Street Journal

"McEwan is in the first tier of novelists writing in English today.... He has achieved a complete mastery of his craft." --The New York Observer

"This is McEwan at the height of his powers.... More audacious than Atonement." --The Baltimore Sun

"In Saturday, the marvelously gifted Ian McEwan turns a single day into nearly twenty-four hours emblematic of an entire era." --Chicago Tribune

"One of the most powerful pieces of post--9/11 fiction yet published." --The New York Times

"Complex, suspenseful.... This novel ... reinforces Ian McEwan's status as the supreme novelist of his generation." --The Sunday Times (London)

"Engrossing.... A thoughtful, measured and mature look at our world today.... [McEwan's] skill at weaving together suspense, psychological depth and beautiful prose makes him among Britain's best." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"A major event.... Saturday proceeds serenely into very different territory where the most secure existence is ringed by sinister possibilities." --Time

"Thoroughly fascinating.... For sheer intelligence and skill, it's hard to beat Ian McEwan's Saturday." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Impeccable.... Beautifully crafted.... Fluid, richly textured.... Engrossing." --Entertainment Weekly

"Read this book.... On the level of the sentence, McEwan is smart, witty and insightful.... His writing astounds..... Saturday is almost too good to bear." --The Times-Picayune

"Utterly enthralling.... Stunningly orderly and harmonious." --The Seattle Times

"Magnificently imagined." --San Francisco Chronicle

"A brilliant work.... Astoundingly enjoyable." --O, The Oprah Magazine

"McEwan's special achievement ... is not only to give his narrative ... near-hallucinatory clarity and verisimilitude, but also to make you realize that the world of his novel is our world. It's a book of poignant insight into the temper of the times.... And it's something rare and precious: a wise book." --San Jose Mercury News

"Hypnotic.... Exquisitely detailed, rich and suspenseful, literate and surprisingly explosive." --The Miami Herald

"McEwan's sentences are perfect, and his novels are always powerful and intelligent." --People

"Sober yet scintillating.... Lucidly shows us that civilization and culture and the life of the mind, fragile as they seemingly are, nonetheless have a resilience that can outlast barbarism." --Christopher Hitchens, The Atlantic Monthly

"A magnificent new novel that captures both the comforts and the anxieties of the world we live in right now." --Vogue

"The distinctive achievement of McEwan's work has been to marry literary seriousness and ambition with a pace and momentum more commonly associated with genre fiction. He is the master clockmaker of novelists, piecing together cogs and wheels of his plots with unerring meticulousness." --The New York Times Book Review

"Marvelous.... A magical book.... McEwan shows again the quiet brilliance of his prose and his insights." --Detroit Free Press

"Captivating. . . . The prose is so precise and evocative the reader can 'see' the scenes unfolding. . . . [McEwan] is at the top of his game." --The Denver Post

About the Author

IAN MCEWAN is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen novels and two short story collections. 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; 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.