‘England’s national author’ takes on the topic of climate change
Ian McEwan’s forthcoming novel, entitled Solar, is about a physicist working on solutions to environmental problems – specifically artificial photosynthesis – who gets caught up in a media controversy due to an unfortunate slip of the tongue. The story itself, according to an interview with McEwan by the Eastern Daily Press from August 3rd, is less about climate change and more about a character who finds himself in a crisis brought about by chance, against the backdrop of climate change science.
Photo by Eamon McCabe (Image source: ianmcewan.com)
McEwan is not a scientist, but he is a novelist who puts an impressive amount of research into his fictional work. He spent two years following a neurosurgeon as research for his 2005 novel Saturday. His inspiration for Solar began while living on a boat frozen in a Norwegian fjord with a group of scientists and artists as part of Cape Farewell, an Arctic exploration project with the aim of generating a ‘cultural response’ to climate change.
“I thought ‘well, this is a highly self-selected group of climate change people’,” he says now. “In the evenings we were discussing how to save the planet, and a few feet away through a bulkhead was this utter chaos! And I thought ‘that’s perfect, that’s the human angle on this that I want’. If one thinks of literature and novels in particular as investigations of human nature, then human nature suddenly became at the centre of our problem about climate change: that we’re sort of cooperative but selfish, we’re not used to thinking in long-term eras beyond our own lifespans or immediate spans of interest.” –EDP24.co.uk
Ian McEwan is the author of successful works such as Atonement (2001), The Cement Garden (1978), The Comfort of Strangers (1981) and On Chesil Beach (2007). The publishing date given by Random House for his latest novel, Solar, is March 18th, 2010.
By Graham Land
Additional resources:
The Guardian: McEwan’s new novel will feature media hate figure
Ian McEwan on Darwin, Science Writing and Climate Change (youtube)
New Yorker profile on Ian McEwan
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Tags: climate change, Ian McEwan, McEwan, Solar
Greenfudge.org » ‘England’s national author’ takes on the topic of climate change…
Ian McEwan’s forthcoming novel, entitled Solar, is about a physicist working on solutions to environmental problems – specifically artificial photosynthesis – who gets caught up in a media controversy due to an unfortunate slip of the tongue….
Greenfudge.org » ‘England’s national author’ takes on the topic of climate change…
Ian McEwan’s forthcoming novel, entitled Solar, is about a physicist working on solutions to environmental problems – specifically artificial photosynthesis – who gets caught up in a media controversy due to an unfortunate slip of the…