Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Ian McEwan
Dedication
Title Page
Epigraph
Part One: 2000
Part Two: 2005
Part Three: 2009
Appendix
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Book
Michael Beard is a Nobel prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. A compulsive womaniser, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time it is different: she is having the affair, and he is still in love with her.
When Beard’s professional and personal worlds collide in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself for Beard to extricate himself from his marital mess, reinvigorate his career and save the world from environmental disaster. Ranging from the Arctic Circle to the deserts of New Mexico, this is a story of one man’s greed and self-deception; a darkly satirical novel showing human frailty struggling with the most pressing and complex problem of our time.
About the Author
Ian McEwan is a critically acclaimed author of short stories and novels for adults, as well as The Daydreamer, a children’s novel illustrated by Anthony Browne. 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 and The Children Act.
Also by Ian McEwan
First Love, Last Rites
In Between the Sheets
The Cement Garden
The Comfort of Strangers
The Child In Time
The Innocent
Black Dogs
The Daydreamer
Enduring Love
Amsterdam
Atonement
Saturday
On Chesil Beach
Sweet Tooth
The Children Act
Nutshell
To Polly Bide
1949–2003
IAN McEWAN
Solar
‘It gives him great pleasure, makes Rabbit feel rich, to contemplate the world’s wasting, to know the earth is mortal too.’
Rabbit is Rich, John Updike
Part One
2000