Discover the modern classic that has sold over two million .

‘A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended’

On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house.

Watching her too is Robbie Turner who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever, as Briony commits a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.

**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**

"A magnificent novel" - Independent

"A superb achievement" - New York Times

"The best thing he has ever written" - Observer

"He is this country's unrivalled literary giant...a fascinatingly strange, unique and gripping novel" - Independent on Sunday

"McEwan's best novel so far, his masterpiece" - Evening Standard

"A beautiful and majestic fictional panorama" - John Updike

"Subtle as well as powerful, adeptly encompassing comedy as well as atrocity, Atonement is a richly intricate book... A superb achievement" - Sunday Times

"Atonement is a masterpiece...it is also an elegy to a time which, however volatile, still had certainties" - The Times

"An evocative depiction of the dangers of innocence and ignorance in the face of uncomfortable reality." - Herald

"Brilliantly explores the currents of guilt, shame and anger... Utterly satisfying, complete" - Scotsman

Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen books. 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; and Nutshell, which was a Number One bestseller. Atonement and Enduring Love have both been turned into award-winning films, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach are in production and set for release this year, and filming is currently underway for a BBC TV adaptation of The Child in Time.