num_pages: 351
description: On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her older sister, Cecilia, strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching Cecilia is their housekeeper's son Robbie Turner, a childhood friend who, along with Briony's sister, has recently graduated from Cambridge.By the end of that day the lives of all three will have been changed forever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had never before dared to approach and will have become victims of the younger girl's scheming imagination. And Briony will have committed a dreadful crime, the guilt from which will color her entire life.In each of his novels Ian McEwan has brilliantly drawn his reader into the intimate lives and situations of his characters. But never before has he worked with so large a canvas: In Atonement he takes the reader from a manor house in England in 1935 to the retreat from Dunkirk in 1940; from the London's World War II military hospitals to a reunion of the Tallis clan in 1999.--front flap
language: English
title: Atonement
titlecomplete: Atonement
characters: Cecilia Tallis, Pierrot Quincey, Robbie Turner, Leon Tallis, Paul Marshall, Jackson Quincey, Lola Quincey, Emily Tallis, Briony Tallis
genres: Historical, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Classics, War, Romance, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 507668
places: England, London, England, United Kingdom, France
awards: awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Booker Prize, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: James Tait Black Memorial Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Whitbread Award
category: Novel, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: WH Smith Literary Award, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Los Angeles Times Book Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Exclusive Books Boeke Prize, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Deutscher Buchpreis (German Book Prize)
category: Internationale Belletristik, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Commonwealth Writers' Prize
category: Best Book in South Asia and Europe, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Premi Llibreter de narrativa, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Dublin Literary Award
publisher: Nan A. Talese