Amsterdam
Ian McEwan · b. 1948 · England
Why it matters
Two old friends at a former lover's funeral strike a grim pact about how to handle each other's decline, a bargain neither man's vanity can quite be trusted to honor. McEwan's compact, blackly comic Booker winner turns friendship into a duel.
At a glance
satiretragedy
Difficulty 4/10fast pace193 pagesA tight, fast, compact plot told in clean, controlled prose.
Deep dive
Two old friends make a well-meaning pact at a funeral about how they'd want to go — and McEwan spends the rest of the novel testing exactly how far a wounded vanity will stretch that promise to cover something much uglier.
Where to go next
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