Top 10 Best Ian McEwan Books You should Read

best books by Ian McEwan

Are you looking for the best Ian McEwan books? Worry no longer, you are in the right place!

Ian McEwan is a critically acclaimed author of short stories and novels for adults, as well as The Daydreamer, a children’s novel illustrated by Anthony Browne.

His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award.

His other award-winning novels are The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, and Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize.

We looked at all of the books written by Patricia Cornwell for you and after hours of hair-splitting research, we bring some of her best books to you.

It isn’t an easy task to find the best books of an author because every book is different from each other. So, we also consider the scores based on selling and readers review of various book ranking websites like Goodreads, Amazon, LibraryThing, BookBub, Bookish, etc to find the best books.

Hope this article about 10 best Ian McEwan books will help you to narrow down your choice to make your book selection process easier and faster.

Happy reading!


Best Books By Ian McEwan

The top 10 best Ian McEwan books are generalized below:

1. Atonement

atonement by Ian Mcewan

Ian McEwan’s symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from this master of English prose.

On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, 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 is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend 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. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl’s imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.

Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.

2. On Chesil Beach

on chesil beach by Ian Mcewan

The bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Atonement brilliantly illuminates the collision of sexual longing, deep-seated fears, and romantic fantasy on a young couple’s wedding night.

It is 1962, and Florence and Edward are celebrating their wedding in a hotel on the Dorset coast. Yet as they dine, the expectation of their marital duties become overwhelming. Unbeknownst to them both, the decisions they make this night will resonate throughout their lives. With exquisite prose, Ian McEwan creates in On Chesil Beach a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from Ian McEwan. A story about how the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

3. The Children Act

the children act by Ian Mcewan

A fiercely intelligent, well-respected High Court judge in London faces a morally ambiguous case while her own marriage crumbles in a novel that will keep readers thoroughly enthralled until the last stunning page.

Fiona Maye is a leading High Court judge who presides over cases in the family division. She is renowned for her fierce intelligence, exactitude, and sensitivity. But her professional success belies private sorrow and domestic strife. There is the lingering regret of her childlessness, and now her marriage of thirty years is in crisis.

At the same time, she is called on to try an urgent case: Adam, a beautiful seventeen-year-old boy, is refusing for religious reasons the medical treatment that could save his life, and his devout parents echo his wishes. Time is running out. Should the secular court overrule sincerely expressed faith?

In the course of reaching a decision, Fiona visits Adam in the hospital. An encounter that stirs long-buried feelings in her and powerful new emotions in the boy. Her judgment has momentous consequences for them both.

4. Saturday

saturday by Ian Mcewan

In his triumphant new novel, Ian McEwan, the bestselling author of Atonement, follows an ordinary man through a Saturday whose high promise gradually turns nightmarish.

Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon, urbane, privileged, deeply in love with his wife and grown-up children, plans to play a game of squash, visit his elderly mother, and cook dinner for his family.

But after a minor traffic accident leads to an unsettling confrontation, Perowne must set aside his plans and summon a strength greater than he knew he had in order to preserve the life that is dear to him.

5. Sweet Tooth

Sweet tooth by Ian Mcewan

In this stunning new novel, Ian McEwan’s first female protagonist since Atonement is about to learn that espionage is the ultimate seduction.

Cambridge student Serena Frome’s beauty and intelligence make her the ideal recruit for MI5. The year is 1972. The Cold War is far from over. England’s legendary intelligence agency is determined to manipulate the cultural conversation by funding writers whose politics align with those of the government. The operation is code named “Sweet Tooth.”

Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is the perfect candidate to infiltrate the literary circle of a promising young writer named Tom Haley. At first, she loves his stories. Then she begins to love the man. How long can she conceal her undercover life? To answer that question, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage: trust no one.

Once again, Ian McEwan’s mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty story of betrayal and intrigue, love and the invented self.

6. Nutshell

nutshell by Ian Mcewan

From literary superstar Ian McEwan Ian McEwan comes Nutshell, a gloriously entertaining, wonderfully imagined novel, a mesmerizing thriller to delight all readers.

Trudy has betrayed her husband, John, who trusts and adores her. She’s living in the marital home–a dilapidated, and priceless London townhouse–but John’s not there.

In his stead is the profoundly banal Claude–and together they’re hatching a murderous plan. But there is an unexpected witness to their plot, who cares deeply about the outcome: the inquisitive nine-month-old inhabitant of Trudy’s womb.

Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is riveting, an unforgettably original, wickedly entertaining, novel of murder and deceipt from one of the world’s master storytellers.

7. Amsterdam

amsterdam by Ian Mcewan

The Booker Prize-winning contemporary morality tale, cleverly disguised as a comic novel from the acclaimed author of Atonement.

On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly’s lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence.

Clive is Britain’s most successful modern composer, and Vernon is a newspaper editor. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister.

In the days that follow Molly’s funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen.

8. Enduring Love

enduring love by Ian Mcewan

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Atonement, here is a brilliant and compassionate novel of love, faith, and suspense, and of how life can change in an instant.

The calm, organized life of science writer Joe Rose is shattered when he sees a man die in a freak hot-air balloon accident. A stranger named Jed Parry joins Rose in helping to bring the balloon to safety.

But unknown to Rose, something passes between Parry and himself on that day, something that gives birth to an obsession in Parry so powerful that it will test the limits of Rose’s beloved rationalism, threaten the love of his wife, Clarissa, and drive him to the brink of murder and madness.

9. The Cement Garden

the cement garden by Ian Mcewan

Ian McEwan is known to skirt the edge with his writing; the fringes of society, to test the limits of what we can handle perhaps in our worlds as we bring his writing home with us and allow a whole new being to enter.

So it is with The Cement Garden, the story of dying family who live in a dying part of the city. The father of four children decides, in an effort to make his garden easier to control, to pave it over.

In the process, he has a heart attack and dies, leaving the cement garden unfinished and the children to the care of their mother.

Soon after, the mother too dies and the children, fearful of being separated by social services, decide to cover up their parents’ deaths: they bury their mother in the cement garden.

10. Solar

solar by Ian Mcewan

Universally acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest novelists, Ian McEwan is a Booker Prize-winning, best-selling literary master. He displays a fresh facet of his considerable talent in Solar, a satirical novel rife with blistering humor.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Michael Beard is fast approaching 60, a mere shell of the academic titan he once was. While his fifth marriage falls apart, Michael suddenly finds himself with an unexpected opportunity to reinvigorate his career and possibly save humankind from the growing threat of global warming.


Your Thoughts

Are you a huge fan of Ian McEwan’s books like us?

Do you disagree with this list of best books by Ian McEwan?

Do we miss anything to add?

You are most welcome to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Read Also:

Hussain M

Introducing Hussain M, the brains behind Honestreaders.com. With a passion for great authors, he's on a mission to help you navigate their works.

Recent Posts