Ian McEwan: Art and Politics

Ian McEwan's work is paradigmatic for the intricate relationship between art and politics in British fiction. Whereas his early work is more concerned with the family and its perversions, there is a definite politicization after 'The Comfort of Strangers' (1981). The years between McEwan's Venetian novel and 'The Child in Time' (1987) was a period of gestation: he wrote the libretto 'Or Shall We Die?' (1983) and the script for 'The Ploughman's Lunch' (1985) taking up nuclear disarmament and Thatcherism. McEwan saw these works as 'A Move Abroad' (1989) and returned to the novel with the caustically political 'The Child in Time'. All his later novels have strong political undertones most drastically visualized in 'The Innocent' (1990): Otto's mutilated corpse as an image of Berlin. In 'Saturday' (2005), the mass rally against the Iraq War in 2003 is the background against which the Perowne's Bloomsday takes place. Similarly, in 'Black Dogs' (1992) or 'Amsterdam' (1998) politics are shown in their complex relationship to art which is also celebrated in 'The Atonement' (2001).