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 for 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 1941; from London's World War II military hospitals to a reunion of the Tallis clan in 1999.

Atonement is Ian McEwan's finest achievement. Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class, the novel is at its center a profound -- and profoundly moving -- exploration of shame and forgiveness and the difficulty of absolution.

"It is rare for a critic to feel justified in using the word "masterpiece," but Ian McEwan's new book really deserves to be called one...Atonement is a work of astonishing depth and humanity... This novel really is worthy of the Booker."
   THE ECONOMIST

"The narrative, as always with McEwan, smoulders with slow-burning menace. The book is magically readable...

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 a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment's flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia's childhood friend. But Briony's incomplete grasp of adult motives -- together with her precocious literary gifts -- brings about a crime that will change all their lives. As it follows that crime's repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.

Atonement is Ian McEwan's finest achievement. Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class, the novel is at its center a profound -- and profoundly moving -- exploration of shame and forgiveness and the difficulty of absolution.

"A beautiful and majestic fictional panorama."
   , THE NEW YORKER

"Flat-out brilliant.... Lush, detailed, vibrantly colored and intense."
   SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

"A tour de force.... Every bit as affecting as it is gripping."
   MICHIKO KAKUTANI, THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Luminous.... Atonement is brilliant and like nothing he's ever written before."
   NEWSWEEK