Ian McEwan is one of the “governing triumvirate” of contemporary British prose (along with Julian Barnes and Martin Amis) and the Booker Prize winner for his novel “Amsterdam.”
For the children’s writer Stephen Lewis, his three-year-old daughter vanishes—unexpectedly and inexplicably—right from a supermarket. The loss overturns Stephen’s entire life and shows him, in the most vivid way, that the daughter was the only meaning of his life. Stephen’s personal drama unfolds against the background of the relentless flow of time, which has begun a strange struggle with the main character. Only gradually does Stephen understand that not man controls his time—time rules people: the time of conception and the time of birth, the time of growth and of maturity. In short, time as a mysterious, impersonal, all-powerful force that cannot be charted, but can be resisted—only by overcoming oneself.