Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan , CBE , FRSA (born June 21, 1948 in Aldershot , England ) is a British writer.
Life
Ian McEwan is the son of a Scottish major (Aldershot is a military base) and grew up as a result of his father's transfers in Singapore and Libya, among other places . He studied English and French philology at the University of Sussex in Brighton, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English literature. During his subsequent studies to obtain a Master of Arts in English Literature at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, Ian McEwan attended a course in creative writing with the novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson . He later taught himself at the University of Sussex. Since the success of the short story collection First Love, Last Rites (1975) he has lived as a freelance writer. In the course of his career, McEwan has received almost all major awards for English-language literature.
About half of his stories were filmed, e.g. B. 2007 apology from the British director Joe Wright or 2017 Am Strand , for whom he also wrote the screenplay.
McEwan is an atheist.
family
McEwan was first married to the journalist, astrologer and naturopath Penny Allen. The marriage was divorced in 1995. He has two sons with his first wife. His second marriage is to the journalist and writer Annalena McAfee and lives in London.
In 2002, McEwan learned that he has a biological brother. It comes from an extramarital affair with his mother during World War II , who gave him up for adoption before her husband returned. After her husband fell, the mother married her previous lover three years later; Ian was born six years after his brother. It was only after her death that McEwan's mother's sister revealed the family secret.
Themes, style and impact
McEwan's early subjects included a. Adolescence, sex and sadism. Sigmund Freud , Franz Kafka and Virginia Woolf should be mentioned above all among the literary models of the “chronicler of the polymorphic perverse” ; there are also literary allusions to Arthur Conan Doyle , Charles Dickens and others.
McEwan's techniques include slowly sliding (and sliding off) associations in situations where nothing extraordinary is actually happening. Geoff Dyer says McEwan has creatively brought the tradition of the British novel to the height of the 21st century.
The critic Felicitas von Lovenberg justifies the effect of McEwan's stories: His themes are "love and separation, innocence and self-knowledge", also simply the "passage of time"; his sentences would get along "without demonstrative muscle play". He loves “confronting ordinary people with unusual situations, and he always succeeds brilliantly in awakening an inkling of imminent catastrophes in the reader”. In the cement garden and Abitte he illuminates the “uncanny zone between childhood and adulthood”. The volume Ein Kind zu Zeit and the surrealist short stories in Der Tagdäumer (originally a collection of bedtime stories for his stepdaughter) also show how well McEwan empathizes with the psyche of prepubescent children and adolescents and their daydreams of power and powerlessness can.
Today McEwan develops "characters who develop social effects with their professions and who touch interesting issues of the time with their actions" and combines these actions with relationship crises. He also includes the topic of political violence (e.g. in the novel Amsterdam ).
Awards and honors
- 1976: Somerset Maugham Award for the short story First Love, Last Rites
- 1987: Whitbread Novel Award for the novel The Child in Time
- 1989: Honorary Doctorate from the University of Sussex
- 1993: Prix Femina Étranger for the novel The Child in Time in the French translation L´enfant volé
- 1993: Honorary Doctorate from the University of East Anglia
- 1998: Booker Prize for the novel Amsterdam
- 1999: Shakespeare Prize of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation for the complete work
- 1999: Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 2000: Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)
- 2001: People's Booker for the novel Atonement
- 2002: National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award for the novel Atonement
- 2002: WH Smith Literary Award for the novel Atonement
- 2003: German Book Prize for the novel Atonement
- 2003: Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction for the novel Atonement
- 2004: Santiago Prize for the European Novel for the novel Atonement
- 2005: James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the novel Saturday
- 2006: Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- 2008: Galaxy Book of the Year for the novel On Chesil Beach
- 2010: Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Solar . The prize consists of a double magnum bottle of Bollinger Special Cuvée, a case of La Grande Cuvée, the complete PG Wodehouse edition and the honorable naming of a Gloucester Old Sport pig in the name of the piece of literature.
- 2011: Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society
- 2012: Paddy Power Political Fiction Book for the novel Sweet Tooth
- 2020: Goethe Medal
Works
Novels and short stories
- 1975: First Love, Last Rites ; German First Love, Last Rites , translated by Harry Rowohlt , Diogenes, Zurich 1982, ISBN 3-257-01602-6 .
- 1978: The Cement Garden ; German The cement garden , translated by Christian Enzensberger , Diogenes, Zurich 1982, ISBN 3-257-20648-8 .
- 1978: In Between the Sheets ; German Between the Linen , translated by Michael Walter , Wulf Teichmann and Christian Enzensberger, Diogenes, Zurich 1983, ISBN 3-257-01631-X .
- 1981: The Comfort of Strangers ; German The Consolation of Strangers , translated by Michael Walter, Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01652-2 .
- 1985: Rose Blanche .
- 1987: The Child in Time ; German A child at the time , translated by Otto Bayer, Diogenes, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-257-01776-6 .
- 1990: The Innocent ; German innocents. A love story from Berlin , translated by Hans-Christian Oeser , Diogenes, Zurich 1990, ISBN 3-257-01858-4 .
- 1992: Black Dogs ; German black dogs , translated by Hans-Christian Oeser, Diogenes, Zurich 1994, ISBN 3-257-06007-6 .
- 1995: The Daydreamer ; German The Daydreamer , translated by Hans-Christian Oeser, Diogenes, Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-257-06071-8 .
- 1997: Enduring Love ; dt. Liebeswahn , translated by Hans-Christian Oeser, Diogenes, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-257-06183-8 .
- 1998: Amsterdam ; German Amsterdam , translated by Hans-Christian Oeser, Diogenes, Zurich 2000, ISBN 3-257-06220-6 .
- 2001: Atonement ; German apology , translated by Bernhard Robben , Diogenes, Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-257-23380-9 .
- 2005: Saturday ; dt. Saturday , translated by Bernhard Robben, Diogenes, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-257-06494-2 .
- 2007: On Chesil Beach ; German Am Strand , translated by Bernhard Robben, Diogenes, Zurich 2007, ISBN 3-257-06607-4 .
- 2010: solar ; German Solar , translated by Werner Schmitz , Diogenes, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-257-06765-1 .
- 2012: Sweet Tooth ; German honey , translated by Werner Schmitz, Diogenes, Zurich 2013, ISBN 978-3-257-06874-0 .
- 2014: The Children Act ; German welfare of the child , translated by Werner Schmitz, Diogenes, Zurich 2015, ISBN 978-3-257-06916-7 .
- 2016: Nutshell ; German nutshell , translated by Bernhard Robben, Diogenes, Zurich 2016, ISBN 978-3-257-06982-2 .
- 2019: Machines Like Me ; German machines like me , translated by Bernhard Robben, Diogenes, Zurich 2019, ISBN 978-3-257-07068-2 .
- 2019: The Cockroach ; German The Cockroach , translated by Bernhard Robben, Diogenes, Zurich 2019, ISBN 978-3-257-07132-0 .
Libretti
- 1983: Or Shall We Die? ; dt. Or do we have to die? . Text for an oratorio by Michael Berkeley, Diogenes, Zurich 1984, ISBN 3-257-21212-7 .
- 2008: For You: The Libretto For Michael Berkeley's Opera ; German / English For You: Libretto for an opera by Michael Berkeley . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, ISBN 3-257-06684-8 .
Plays
- 1981: The Imitation Game
Scripts
- 1976: Jack Flea's Birthday Celebration
- 1985: The Plowman's Lunch
- 1989: Soursweet , based on a novel by Timothy Mo ; German Chinese Blues .
- 1993: The Good Son ; dt. The second face .
- 2017: The Children Act
Film adaptations
- 1988: Butterflies (short story from First Love, Last Rites )
- 1990: The Consolation of Strangers
- 1993: The cement garden
- 1993: ... and the sky stands still ( innocents )
- 1997: Solid Geometry (short story from First Love, Last Rites )
- 2004: Liebeswahn - Enduring Love
- 2007: Atonement (Atonement)
- 2017: Child Welfare (The Children Act)
- 2017: At the beach (On Chesil Beach)
- 2017: The Child in Time (The Child in Time)
documentary
McEwan was featured in the documentary The Root of All Evil? interviewed by Richard Dawkins . He is also featured in Richard Dawkins' documentary The Unbelievers (2013).
literature
- Peter Childs: Contemporary novelists. British fiction since 1970. Basingstoke et al: Palgrave Macmillan 2005.
- Lars Heiler: Regression and cultural criticism in contemporary British novels. Cultural studies of the novels of Ian McEwan, Jim Crace, Irvine Welsh and Will Self. Tübingen: Narr 2004. (= Mannheim contributions to linguistics and literary studies; 57) ISBN 3-8233-6017-5
- David Malcolm: Understanding Ian McEwan. Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press 2002. ISBN 1-57003-436-2
- Swantje Möller: Coming to Terms with Crisis: Disorientation and Reorientation in the Novels of Ian McEwan. Heidelberg: Winter 2011. ISBN 978-3-8253-5880-8
- Jago Morrison: Contemporary fiction. London: Routledge 2003. ISBN 0-415-19456-3
- Göran Nieragden: Figure representation in the novel. A narratological system based on the example of David Lodges Changing places and Ian McEwan's The child in time. Trier: WVT Trier. 1995. (= Horizonte; 18) ISBN 3-88476-165-X
- Claudia Schemberg: Achieving "at-one-ment". Storytelling and the concept of the self in Ian McEwan's The child in time, Black dogs, Enduring love, and Atonement. Frankfurt am Main et al: Lang 2004. (= Anglo-American studies; 26) ISBN 3-631-52782-9
- Jack Slay: Ian McEwan. New York: Twayne Publ. Et al. 1996. (= Twayne's English authors series; 518) ISBN 0-8057-4578-5
- Astrid Wagner: Constructions of temporal experience in the contemporary British novel of the eighties. Studies on novels by Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Graham Swift and Beckett's 'Molloy' and Butor's 'L'Emploi du temps'. Trier: WVT 1996. (= Horizonte; 22) ISBN 3-88476-216-8
Individual evidence
- ^ [1] The New York Times, December 2, 2007
- ^ Novelist McEwan discovers brother. BBC News, January 17, 2007, accessed September 16, 2008 .
- ↑ Annalena McAfee: Dreams, Demons and a Rare Talent to Disturb , in: Financial Times, 1./2. October 1994.
- ↑ Who's afraid of influence? In his latest book Atonement Ian McEwan brings the British novel into the 21st century, says Geoff Dyer. in: www.theguardian.com, September 22, 2001.
- ↑ Flicitas von Lovenberg: Poisoned Lines. In www.faz.net, August 31, 2002.
- ↑ Angela Gutzeit: Ian McEwan: Kindwohl. A life choice. In: www.deutschlandfunk.de, February 15, 2015.
- ↑ Honorary Members: Ian McEwan. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 16, 2019 .
- ↑ Goethe-Institut press release of April 28, 2020: Award ceremony on Goethe's birthday on August 28: Goethe Medal 2020 for Elvira Espejo Ayca, Ian McEwan and Zukiswa Wanner , accessed on April 28, 2020
- ↑ Ian McEwan: "The Cockroach" - They do it because they do it , Frankfurter Rundschau from November 26, 2019, accessed November 27, 2019
- ^ The Plowman's Lunch. In: " IMDb ". Retrieved October 29, 2012 .
- ↑ Soursweet. In: " IMDb ". Retrieved October 29, 2012 .
- ↑ The second face. In: " IMDb ". Retrieved October 29, 2012 (Original Title: The Good Son).
- ↑ Butterflies. In: " IMDb ". Retrieved October 29, 2012 .
- ^ The Comfort of Strangers. In: " IMDb ". Retrieved October 29, 2012 .
- ↑ The cement garden. In: " IMDb ". Retrieved October 29, 2012 (Original title: The Cement Garden).
- ↑ ... and the sky stands still. In: " IMDb ". Retrieved October 29, 2012 (Original title: The Innocent).
- ↑ First Love, Last Rites. In: " IMDb ". Retrieved October 29, 2012 .
- ↑ Enduring Love. In: " IMDb ". Retrieved October 29, 2012 .
- ↑ Atonement. In: " IMDb ". Retrieved October 29, 2012 (original title: Atonement).
Web links
- Literature by and about Ian McEwan in the catalog of the German National Library
- Official website of Ian McEwan
- Short biography and reviews of works by Ian McEwan at perlentaucher.de
- Ian McEwan: I have a dream in the period of 27 July 2006
- Ian McEwan in the Internet Movie Database (English)
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | McEwan, Ian |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | McEwan, Ian Russell (full name) |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British writer |
DATE OF BIRTH | June 21, 1948 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Aldershot |