Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan is a prolific British author whose novels have established him as one of the leading voices in contemporary English-language literature. Winner of the 1998 Booker Prize for Amsterdam, he reached a wide international readership with Atonement (2001), later adapted into an Academy Award–winning film; other acclaimed works include Enduring Love (1997), Saturday (2005), On Chesil Beach (2007), and Lessons (2022). Science is a persistent current in McEwan’s fiction. Saturday follows a London neurosurgeon over one day, filtering global anxieties through brain science and clinical acuity. Solar satirizes climate-science culture via a disgraced Nobel laureate, while Machines Like Me stages a bracing argument about AI, ethics, and personhood. His most recent novel, What We Can Know (2025), extends these concerns into a post-apocalyptic, epistemological quest he has called “science fiction without the science,” underscoring his abiding interest in science, technology, morality and their intertwined impact on human existence.