Ian McEwan was born in 1948 in England, and spent much of his childhood in the Far East, Germany, and North Africa.
Among his many literary honors, McEwan has been awarded the Somerset Maugham Award for First Love, Last Rites and the Whitbread Prize for The Child in Time. In 1998, he received the Booker Prize for Amsterdam, and award for which had been nominated three times. He has also received the WH Smith Literary Award and National Book Critics’ Circle Fiction Award for Atonement, as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Saturday.
His recent books include Atonement, Saturday, and On Chesil Beach. He has recently been working on an opera with the composer Michael Berkeley.