Saturday

Saturday, February 15, 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man – a successful neurosurgeon, the devoted husband of Rosalind and proud father of two grown-up children. Unusually, he wakes before dawn, drawn to the window of his bedroom and filled with a growing unease. What troubles him as he looks out at the night sky is the state of the world – the impending war against Iraq, a gathering pessimism since 9/11, and a fear that his city and his happy family life are under threat. Later, Perowne makes his way to his weekly squash game through London streets filled with hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors. A minor car accident brings him into a confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive, young man, on the edge of violence. To Perowne’s professional eye, there appears to be something profoundly wrong with him. Towards the end of a day rich in incident and filled with Perowne’s celebrations of life’s pleasures, his family gathers for a reunion. But with the sudden appearance of Baxter, Perowne’s earlier fears seem about to be realised.

Written with superb exactness, complex, suspenseful and humane, this novel.reinforces his status as the supreme novelist of his generation” – Sunday Times

‘Dazzling. Profound and urgent’ – Observer

‘Richly laden. McEwan pulls out all the stops. A rich book, sensuous and thoughtful. McEwan has found in Saturday the right form to showcase his dazzling talents’ – Sunday Telegraph

‘Everyone should read Saturday. Artistically, morally and politically, he excels’ – The Times

‘Saturday is wonderfully involving and affecting on every page. Everybody with any interest in contemporary literature will want to read it at once’ – Evening Standard

‘A brilliant novel.It is McEwan writing on absolute top form’ – Daily Mail

‘Refreshing and engrossing, dense with revelation. Superb’ – Independent on Sunday