Amsterdam: A Novel

Amsterdam: A Novel

Ian McEwan • Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

This edition of Amsterdam: A Novel

ISBN-10: 0385494246 · ISBN-13: 978‑0385494243 · 1998 · 1st Edition

Live offer for this book: 57 live copies of this book from $1.93 (as of 2026-09-05).

Dimensions: 8 × 5.1 × 0.6 in

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Completeness 48

Cover quality: good

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The Nile on eBay Amsterdam by Ian McEwan The wickedly comic Booker Prize winner. On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a crematorium to pay their last respects to the woman who had been a lover to both of them. In the days that follow the funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact that will have consequences that neither man could have foreseen. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A sharp contemporary morality tale, cleverly disguised as a comic novel, Amsterdam is "a dark tour de force, perfectly fashioned" (The New York Times) from the bestselling author of Atonement. On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence: Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is a newspaper editor. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister. masterfully wrought, sure to delight a reader with even half a sense of humor." —The Atlant Journal-Constitution "McEwan writes the sort of witty repartee and scathing retort we wished we thought of in the heat of battle. Ruthless and amusing." -- The New York Times Book Review "Beautifully spare prose, wicked observation, and dark comic brio." -- The Boston Globe "At once far-reaching and tightly self-contained, a fin de si Description for Reading Group Guide Ian McEwan's Booker Prize-winning novel Amsterdam showcase the author's range and skill as he delivers unlikely, and welcome, combinations of suspense, ethics, philosophy, and political and religious ideology. In lesser hands, such a mix might be lethal. In McEwan's, it's intoxicating. Discussion Question for Reading Group Guide 1. Talk about the tone of this novel. Is it ironic? Humorous? Menacing? 2. Think about Clive and Vernon and your feelings about each at different stages of the novel. Did those feelings change? If so, at what key points? 3. In a relatively short novel, the author devotes many pages to Clive's creative process. What do you think of the author's description of the process itself and of his decision to give it so much space? 4. At one early point in the novel, Vernon Halliday thinks this about himself, "[H]e was infinitely diluted; he was simply the sum of all the people who had listened to him, and when he was alone, he was nothing at all." Discuss this prescient statement, in light of Vernon's fate. 5.

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