Nutshell

"An astonishing act of literary ventriloquism unlike any in recent literature. A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master... Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is a shocking tale of murder and treachery from one of the world's master storytellers." * Daily Telegraph * "A creative gamble that pays off brilliantly...Witty and gently tragic, this short, bewitching novel is an ode to humanity's beauty, selfishness and inextinguishable longing." -- Hephzibah Anderson * Mail on Sunday * "Ian McEwan's embryonic spin on Hamlet is a virtuoso feat of wordplay ... Virtuoso entertainment." -- Tim Adams * Observer * "While the literary device of an unborn baby narrating a novel from the womb is hardly original... Ian McEwan employs it with aplomb... Here everything is tightly controlled and the tension ratchets up as our all-knowing unborn watches helplessly from his watery sack while the dastardly plan progresses through a series of nail-biting moments... The ending is beautifully contrived... The book is elegantly written with plenty of pungent, topical observations upon the world." -- John Harding * Daily Mail * "At once playful and deadly serious, delightful and frustrating it is one of McEwan's hardest to categorise works, and all the more interesting for it." -- Robert Douglas-Fairhurst * The Times *

Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen books. 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; and Nutshell, which was a Number One bestseller. Atonement and Enduring Love have both been turned into award-winning films, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach are in production and set for release this year, and filming is currently underway for a BBC TV adaptation of The Child in Time.