First edition. 8vo. Pp. [viii], 279, [1]. Publisher's black cloth, lettered in gilt to spine; midnight blue endpapers. Dustjacket photograph by Chris Frazer Smith (priced at £17.99 to front flap).
McEwan's ninth novel. Winner of the 2005 James Tait Black Award for Fiction. Longlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize. Chosen as one of the Best Five Fiction Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review. Set in London on Saturday, February 15, 2003; the day of the march against the impending war in Iraq. It follows Henry Perowne, a renowned neurosurgeon, through a day whose high promise gradually dissolves into a nightmare. The book mirrors the narrative structure of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925), the author having once lived on the opposite side of Fitzroy Square (no. 29) from McEwan's former residence (no. 11), where the novel is set. "[A] tightly wound tour de force." –The Washington Post Book World