About this item
From Ian McEwan, Booker Prize winner and international bestselling author of Atonement and The Children Act "Moving. . . . Masterly . . . provocative." - The New York Times Book Review"A feat of literary sorcery." - O, The Oprah Magazine"[A] carefully constructed comedy of terrors. . . . [McEwan is] one of the most elegant writers alive." - The Washington Post"Witty and humane . . . a cautionary fable about artificial intelligence, consent, and justice." - The New YorkerSet in an uncanny alternative 1982 London - where Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence - Machines Like Me powerfully portrays two lovers who will be tested beyond their understanding. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first generation of synthetic humans. With Miranda's assistance, he codesigns Adam's personality. The near-perfect human that emerges is beautiful, strong, and smart - and a love triangle soon forms. Ian McEwan's subversive, gripping novel poses fundamental questions: What makes us human - our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns against the power to invent things beyond our control.
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.
