by Ian McEwan
First published 1989
Ian packs a single suitcase and walks away from everything he knows in England. He lands in a foreign country with no job prospects, no connections, and barely enough money to survive the first month. The language feels strange in his mouth. The customs confuse him. Every day brings new humiliations as he searches for work and tries to decode social rules he never had to think about before. His bank account shrinks steadily. The pressure builds as weeks pass without steady income. Old memories he thought he had escaped begin surfacing in this unfamiliar place. The comfortable routines that once defined him no longer exist. Ian faces a brutal choice. He can buy a return ticket and admit failure, or he can push deeper into uncertainty and risk losing everything for a chance at the life he imagined when he first decided to leave.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, new-beginnings
Setting: England
Period: 21st-century
32 pages · Hardcover · Random House UK