The Cement Garden (1978) and The Comfort of Strangers (1981) were his two earliest novels, both of which were adapted into films. His second collection of short stories, In Between the Sheets, was published in 1978.

He achieved notoriety in 1979 when the BBC suspended production of his play Solid Geometry because of its alleged obscenity.

McEwan's first published work was a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites (1975), which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976. McEwan was educated at Woolverstone Hall School the University of Sussex, receiving his degree in English literature in 1970 and the University of East Anglia, where he was one of the first graduates of Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson's pioneering creative writing course. His family returned to England when he was twelve. As a result, McEwan spent much of his childhood in East Asia (including Singapore), Germany and North Africa (including Libya), where his father was posted. His father was a working class Scotsman who had worked his way up through the army to the rank of major. He was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, the son of David McEwan and Rose Lilian Violet (nee Moore). Ian Russell McEwan is an English novelist. Education-B.A., University of Sussex M.A.To Perowne’s professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man, who in turn believes the surgeon has humiliated him - with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep his family alive. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a small-time thug. After an unusual sighting in the early morning sky, he makes his way to his regular squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousands of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war. On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne’s day moves through the ordinary to the extraordinary. There is an impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before. Outside the hospital, the world is not so easy or predictable. He is as at ease here as he is in the operating room. Henry wakes to the comfort of his large home in central London on this, his day off. Henry Perowne is a contented man - a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children. Saturday is a masterful novel set within a single day in February 2003. A brilliant, thrilling page-turner that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. From the pen of a master - the #1 bestselling, Booker Prize–winning author of Atonement - comes an astonishing novel that captures the fine balance of happiness and the unforeseen threats that can destroy it.

Ian mcewan 2005