ABSTRACT
Born in 1948, Ian McEwan started writing short stories in 1970, after studying at the University of Sussex and at the University of East Anglia, where he gained an MA. His first collection, First Love, Last Rites (1975), won enormous praise and the Somerset Maugham Award 1976 for its sophisticated depiction of sensuality and depravity. A second collection, In Between the Sheets (1978) has been followed by two brilliantly executed novels, menacing and exact in their psychological penetration, The Cement Garden (1978) and The Comfort of Strangers (1981). His play for television, The Imitation Game (directed by Richard Eyre) – which Clive James applauded as ‘a “Play for Today” of rare distinction’ – earned him a wider audience and even hotter critical attention. So, sadly, did ‘Solid Geometry’, a television play adapted from one of his short stories, which the BBC aborted just before it went into production. The three television plays he has written to date are available in The Imitation Game (1981).
