About this item
A novel of remarkable depth and poignancy from one of the most acclaimed writers of our time.It is July 1962. Florence is a talented musician who dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, an earnest young history student at University College of London, who unexpectedly wooed and won her heart. Newly married that morning, both virgins, Edward and Florence arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their worries about the wedding night to come. Edward, eager for rapture, frets over Florence’s response to his advances and nurses a private fear of failure, while Florence’s anxieties run deeper: she is overcome by sheer disgust at the idea of physical contact, but dreads disappointing her husband when they finally lie down together in the honeymoon suite.
About the Author
Ian McEwan studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970 and later received his MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia. McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories ; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for ; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for in 1998. His novel received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002) , National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003) , Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003) , and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004) . He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel and his novel was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards where McEwan was also named Reader's Digest Author of the Year. McEwan lives in London.
