On the cusp of the millennium, Ian McEwan submitted to his publisher the manuscript of his eighth novel, Atonement Anticipation at Jonathan Cape was high because the seventh, Amsterdam, had won the Booker Prize.

On the cusp of the millennium, Ian McEwan submitted to his publisher the manuscript of his eighth novel. Anticipation at Jonathan Cape was high because the seventh, Amsterdam, had won the Booker Prize. McEwan, though, lowered expectations for the new one. It was a story “about the imagination” that would only “be of interest to other writers.” Accordingly, the writer advised a low print run. A quarter of a century on from its publication the following year, Atonement is McEwan’s best-selling and best-known book, and it would probably have won the 2001 Booker Prize (for which it was shortlisted) if its author had not been honoured so recently for a lesser work. A 2007 movie won one Oscar and was shortlisted for six others; and the novel has also been turned into an opera and a ballet.

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