Atonement (novel)
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Atonement cover
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| Author | Ian McEwan |
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| Cover artist | Chris Frazer Smith |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
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Publication date
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2001 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 371 pp |
| ISBN | (first edition) |
| OCLC | 47231087 |
Atonement is a 2001 British metafiction novel written by Ian McEwan concerning the understanding and responding to the need for personal . Set in three time periods, 1935 England, Second World War England and France, and present-day England, it covers an upper-class girl's half-innocent mistake that ruins lives; her adulthood in the shadow of that mistake; and a reflection on the nature of writing.
Widely regarded as one of McEwan's best works, it was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize for fiction. In 2010, TIME magazine named Atonement in its list of the 100 greatest English-language novels since 1923.
In 2007, the book was adapted into a BAFTA and Academy Award-nominated film of the same title, starring Saoirse Ronan, James McAvoy and Keira Knightley, and directed by Joe Wright.
Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old English girl with a talent for writing, lives at her family's country estate with her parents. Her older sister Cecilia attends the University of Cambridge with Robbie Turner, the son of the Tallis family housekeeper and a childhood friend of Cecilia. In the summer of 1935, Briony's maternal cousins, Lola and twins Jackson and Pierrot, visit the family. Briony witnesses a moment of sexual tension between Cecilia and Robbie from afar. Briony misconstrues the situation and concludes that Robbie is acting aggressively toward Cecilia. Robbie, meanwhile, realises he is attracted to Cecilia, whom he has not seen in some time, and writes several drafts of a love letter to her, giving a copy to Briony to deliver. However, he inadvertently gives her a version he had meant to discard, which contains lewd and vulgar references ("cunt"). Briony reads the letter and becomes disturbed as to Robbie's intentions. Later she walks in on Robbie and Cecilia making love in the library. Briony misinterprets the sexual act as rape and believes Robbie to be a "maniac."
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