New Ian McEwan

SOLAR is an engrossing and satirical novel which focuses on climate change and will be published on 18 March 2010. This story – of one man’s ambitions and self-deceptions – is a stylish new work by one of the word’s greatest living writers.

Michael Beard is in his late fifties; bald, overweight, unprepossessing – a Nobel prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. An inveterate philanderer, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time it is different: she is having the affair, and he is still in love with her.

When Beard’s professional and personal worlds are entwined in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself, a chance for Beard to extricate himself from his marital mess, reinvigorate his career and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster.

Dan Franklin, Publisher, comments: ‘SOLAR is a novel about one of the most serious threats to our world – global warming – but is also very, very funny. It shows a fresh side to Ian McEwan’s work, that he’s a comic writer of genius.’