McEwan, Ian Russell 1948-
English writer of novels, short stories and screenplays

He was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, and educated at the universities of Sussex and East Anglia. His first collections of stories, First Love, Last Rites (1975) and In Between the Sheets (1978), attracted notoriety for their preoccupation with the erotic and the macabre, still a distinguishing feature of his writing. Less obtrusive but equally consistent is the nature of romantic love, a theme explored in the novels The Comfort of Strangers (1981) and The Innocent (1990), and the screenplay The Ploughman's Lunch (1985). McEwan's 1987 novel, The Child in Time, won the Whitbread award. His later novels, including Black Dogs (1992) build on the theme of the nature of human understanding and man's relationship with history and contemporary society. Recent publications include The Daydreamer (1994) and The Short Stories (1995).