Photographer Unknown, (Waiting), Silver Gelatin Print
“Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached.”
—Ian McEwan, Atonement
Born in 1948 in Aldershot, Hampshire, England, Ian McEwan spent most of his childhood in the Far East, Germany, and North Africa, where his father, an army officer, was posted. Upon his return to England, he studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature in 1970. He later received his Masters of Arts degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia..
McEwan’s 2001novel “Atonement” was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread Novel Award and was the winner of the W. H. Smith Literary Award in 2002. The novel, beginning in 1935, tells the story of Briony, a young girl and aspiring writer, and the consequences of the discovery she makes about Robbie, a young man destined to play a part in the Dunkirk evacuations. This novel was adapted for the screen, with the film, directed by Joe Wright, opening both the Vancouver International Film Festival and the 64th Venice International Film Festival.
Ian McEwan is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, in 1999. He was awarded a CBE, Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, in 2000.