EXERCISES FROM PAGE 22

1. Ian McEwan is a British writer who, according to many critics, has written some of the best novels of recent years.

2. Born in 1948, he spent much of his childhood abroad as his father was an army officer.

3. He studied English literature and creative writing at the universities of Sussex and East Anglia. 

4. He has written a number of successful collections of short stories and novels.

5. His novel The Child in Time won the Whitbread Novel Award in 1987. 

6. His later novels, including Amsterdam, Atonement and Saturday have been very successful.

7. Amsterdam received the Booker Prize for Fiction 1998.

8. Atonement and Saturday also won literary prizes.

9. However, McEwan has always been a controversial writer. 

10. Some writers have accused him of stealing details in Atonement from the work of another author, Lucilla Andrews.

11. However, he pointed out the acknowledgement made to Lucilla Andrews in an author's note in the book.

12. During this controversy, the American author Thomas Pynchon wrote a defence of McEwan in a British newspaper.