source: www.ianmcewan.com

The much-anticipated novel on climate change from the man known as ‘England’s national author’ is finally hitting the shelves.

Solar by Ian McEwan follows a Nobel laureate physicist named Michael Beardwell, who later becomes a green energy entrepreneur. According to a review in Saturday’s Guardian by Christopher Tayler, Solar is a timely, yet non-preachy story set within the current zeitgeist of climate change, science, industry and politics. McEwan delivers the complex characters, detailed research, plot twists and irony that he has become known for.

Instead of a debate on climate change or an informative sermon on the dangers of global warming, McEwan’s secret weapon is humor. The main character is a trope for humanity, a ‘self-deluding, a serial breaker of resolutions, hopelessly addicted to overconsumption’. But despite the comedy, Tayler notes Solar‘s serious message:

Beard’s argument about the correct response to climate change, an argument that McEwan has also made, is that we have no choice but to hope that technological ingenuity, enlightened self-interest and the market’s allocation of resources can get us off the hook; personal virtue counts for little.

–Guardian

Recent events, particularly the collapse of the climate talks in Copenhagen, prompted Ian McEwan to make some last minute changes to Solar, which should make the novel seem all the more timely and fresh. It is clear from the reviews and synopses I’ve read that he also drew deeply from his time with the Cape Farewell project, which brings together artists and scientists in order to create a ‘cultural response’ to Arctic climate change.

Read the entire review of Ian McEwan’s Solar in the Guardian‘s ‘Book of the Week’ and an interview with the author in Friday’s Independent.

–Graham Land