by Ian McEwan
First published 2010
Michael Beard sits in his cluttered office, a Nobel Prize winner coasting on decades-old achievements while his marriage falls apart around him. The physicist has grown complacent, content to live off his reputation rather than pursue new discoveries. Then a competitor develops a breakthrough concept in renewable energy that could eclipse everything Beard has accomplished. Suddenly facing professional irrelevance, Beard scrambles to protect both his scientific standing and his crumbling relationship with his wife. He finds himself caught between his scientific ambitions and his personal failings, forced to make choices that reveal the depth of his moral weakness. The story follows Beard as he tries to stay ahead of his mounting failures, both professional and personal, in a race against time that grows more desperate with each compromise he makes.
Genres: fiction, contemporary, 21st-century, academic
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: character-study, unreliable-narrator
285 pages · Hardcover · Jonathan Cape