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The Cement Garden

Author Ian McEwan
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Paperback
$15.00 US
Knopf | Anchor
On sale Jan 13, 1994 | 160 Pages | 9780679750185
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This tour de force of psychological unease excavates the ruins of childhood and uncovers things that most adults have spent a lifetime forgetting--or denying.

First the father dies, then the mother. Four children are left alone in a house that looks like a castle stranded among grim high-rises. Free of supervision, free of restraint, they can do and be anything, as long as the house's secret is kept.

Out of blasphemous wishes and hair-raising games, McEwan constructs a novel that is all the more chilling for its offhand approach to the unspeakable.

"A master of menace.... The banality of evil fascinates McEwan [and] he seems anxious to identify the cracked steps, the crucibles of experience that jolt individuals, for better or worse, out of their mortal skins."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review
© Bastian Schweitzer / © Diogenes Verlag
IAN MCEWAN is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen novels and two short story collections. 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; Nutshell; and Machines Like Me, which was a number-one bestseller. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.

ianmcewan.com View titles by Ian McEwan

About

This tour de force of psychological unease excavates the ruins of childhood and uncovers things that most adults have spent a lifetime forgetting--or denying.

First the father dies, then the mother. Four children are left alone in a house that looks like a castle stranded among grim high-rises. Free of supervision, free of restraint, they can do and be anything, as long as the house's secret is kept.

Out of blasphemous wishes and hair-raising games, McEwan constructs a novel that is all the more chilling for its offhand approach to the unspeakable.

"A master of menace.... The banality of evil fascinates McEwan [and] he seems anxious to identify the cracked steps, the crucibles of experience that jolt individuals, for better or worse, out of their mortal skins."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review

Author

© Bastian Schweitzer / © Diogenes Verlag
IAN MCEWAN is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen novels and two short story collections. 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; Nutshell; and Machines Like Me, which was a number-one bestseller. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.

ianmcewan.com View titles by Ian McEwan

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