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Atonement contains intertextual references to a number of other literary works, including Gray's Anatomy, Virginia Woolf's The Waves, Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Henry James' The Golden Bowl, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Rosamond Lehmann's Dusty Answer and Shakespeare's The Tempest, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night. McEwan has also said that he was directly influenced by L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between. It also has a (fictional) letter by the literary critic and editor Cyril Connolly, addressed to Briony.

In late 2006, it was reported that romance and historical author Lucilla Andrews felt that McEwan had failed to give her sufficient credit for material on wartime nursing in London sourced from her 1977 autobiography No Time for Romance. McEwan professed innocence of plagiarism while acknowledging his debt to the author. McEwan had included Andrews among the acknowledgements in the book, and several authors defended him, including John Updike, Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Thomas Keneally, Zadie Smith, and the reclusive Thomas Pynchon.

An opera is to be written based on the novel, with music by Michael Berkeley and libretto by Craig Raine. It is hoped to produce the opera in the US, UK and Germany in 2013.

Atonement is a 2001 novel by British author Ian McEwan.

On a fateful day, a young girl (who aspires to be a writer) makes a terrible mistake that has life-changing effects for many people. Consequently, she lives seeking atonement—which leads to an exploration on the nature of writing.

It is widely regarded as one of McEwan's best works and was one of the most celebrated and honoured books of its time. It was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize for fiction. TIME Magazine named Atonement in its list All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels. In 2007, the book was adapted into a BAFTA and Academy Award nominated film, starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley, and directed by Joe Wright.

13-летняя Брайони обладает превосходным воображением и пишет пьесы. Она знает, что сын прислуги Робби влюблен в ее старшую сестру Сесилию и та отвечает ему взаимностью. Но когда ее кузина Лола становится жертвой насильника, Брайони уверенно показывает на Робби — ее воображение дорисовывает картину насилия. Робби отправляется в тюрьму, а Сесилия отказывается верить Брайони, рождая страшную вражду между сестрами. Действие книги начинается в 1934 году и разворачивается на фоне Второй мировой войны.

Part one

In the summer of 1935, Briony Tallis, an English girl with a talent for writing, lives at her family's country estate with her older sister Cecilia, and their cousins, twins Jackson and Pierrot, and Lola. One day, Briony sees a moment of sexual tension between Cecilia and Robbie Turner, the son of the Tallis family housekeeper and a childhood friend of Cecilia's. Robbie realizes he is attracted to Cecilia, whom he has not seen in some time, and writes several drafts of a love letter to her, giving a copy to Briony to deliver. By accident he gives her a version he had meant to discard, which contains lewd and vulgar references ("Cunt"). Briony reads the letter and becomes disturbed as to Robbie's intentions. Later she walks in on Robbie and Cecilia making love in the library. Briony misinterprets the sexual act as rape and believes Robbie to be a "maniac."

Later on at a family dinner party attended by Briony's brother Leon and his friend Paul Marshall, it is discovered that the twins have run away and the dinner party breaks into teams to search for them. In the darkness, Briony discovers her cousin Lola, apparently being raped by an assailant she cannot clearly see. Lola is unable or unwilling to identify the attacker, but Briony decides to accuse Robbie and identifies him to the police as the rapist. Robbie is taken away to prison, with only Cecilia and his mother believing his protestations of innocence.

Part two

By the time World War II has started, Robbie has spent 2–3 years in prison. He is then released on the condition of enlistment in the army to fight in war. Cecilia has trained and become a nurse. She cuts off all contact with her family because of the part they took in sending Robbie to jail. Robbie and Cecilia have only been in contact by letter, since she was not allowed to visit him in prison. Before Robbie has to go to war in France, they meet once for half an hour during Cecilia's lunch break. Their reunion starts awkwardly, but they share a kiss before leaving each other.

In France, the war is going badly and the army is retreating to Dunkirk. As the injured Robbie goes to the safe haven, he thinks about Cecilia and past events like teaching Briony how to swim and reflecting on Briony's possible reasons for accusing him. His single meeting with Cecilia is the memory that keeps him walking, his only aim is seeing her again. At the end of part two, Robbie falls asleep in Dunkirk, one day before the evacuation.

Part three

Remorseful Briony has refused her place at Cambridge and instead is a trainee nurse in London. She has realized the full extent of her mistake, and realizes it was Paul Marshall, Leon's friend, whom she saw raping Lola. Briony still writes, although she does not pursue it with the same recklessness as she did as a child.

Briony is called to the bedside of Luc, a young, fatally wounded French soldier. She consoles him in his last moments by speaking with him in her school French, and he mistakes her for an English girl whom his mother wanted him to marry. Just before his death, Luc asks "Do you love me?", to which Briony answers "Yes," not only because "no other answer was possible" but also because "for the moment, she did. He was a lovely boy far away from his family and about to die." Afterward, Briony daydreams about the life she might have had if she had married Luc and gone to live with him and his family.

Briony attends the wedding of her cousin Lola and Paul Marshall before finally visiting Cecilia. Robbie is on leave from the army and Briony meets him unexpectedly at her sister's. They both refuse to forgive Briony, who nonetheless tells them she will try and put things right. She promises to begin the legal procedures needed to exonerate Robbie, even though Paul Marshall will never be held responsible for his crime because of his marriage to Lola, the victim.

Part four

The fourth section, titled "London 1999", is written from Briony's perspective. She is a successful novelist at the age of 77 and dying of vascular dementia.

It is revealed that Briony is the author of the preceding sections of the novel. Although Cecilia and Robbie are reunited in Briony's novel, they were not in reality. It is suggested that Robbie Turner may have died of septicaemia, caused by his injury, on the beaches of Dunkirk and Cecilia may have been killed by the bomb that destroyed the gas and water mains above Balham Underground station. Cecilia and Robbie may have never seen each other again. Although the detail concerning Lola's marriage to Paul Marshall is true, Briony never visited Cecilia to make amends.

Briony explains why she decided to change real events and unite Cecilia and Robbie in her novel, although it was not her intention in her many previous drafts. She did not see what purpose it would serve if she gave the readers a pitiless ending. She reasons that they could not draw any sense of hope or satisfaction from it. But above all, she wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia their happiness by being together. Since they could not have the time together they so much longed for in reality, Briony wanted to give it to them at least in her novel.

Literary critiques:
Crosthwaite, Paul. "Speed, War, and Traumatic Affect: Reading Ian McEwan's Atonement." Cultural Politics 3.1 (2007): 51-70.

D’hoker, Elke. “Confession and Atonement in Contemporary Fiction: J. M. Coetzee, John Banville, and Ian McEwan.” Critique 48.1 (2006): 31-43.

Finney, Brian. "Briony's Stand Against Oblivion: The Making of Fiction in Ian McEwan's Atonement." Journal of Modern Literature 27.3 (2004): 68-82.

Harold, James. "Narrative Engagement with Atonement and The Blind Assassin." Philosophy and Literature 29.1 (2005): 130-145.

Hidalgo, Pilar. “Memory and Storytelling in Ian McEwan’s Atonement.” Critique 46.2 (2005): 82-91.

Ingersoll, Earl G. “Intertextuality in L. P. Hartley’s The Go-Between and Ian McEwan’s Atonement.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 40 (2004): 241-58.

O'Hara, David K. "Briony's Being-For: Metafictional Narrative Ethics in Ian McEwan’s Atonement." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 52.1 (December 2010): 72-100.

Salisbury, Laura. "Narration and Neurology: Ian McEwan's Mother Tongue", Textual Practice 24.5 (2010): 883-912.

Schemberg, Claudia. Achieving 'At-one-ment': Storytelling and the Concept of Self in Ian McEwan's The Child in Time, Black Dogs, Enduring Love and Atonement.' Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004.

Phelan, James. “Narrative Judgments and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative: Ian McEwan’s Atonement.” A Companion to Narrative Theory. Ed. James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. 322-36.

"Искупление" была номинирована на Букеровскую премию в 2001 году.
Была также в шорт-листе 2001 Джеймса Тейта.
В 2002 получила Национальную книжную премию критиков за Художественную литературу.
"Entertainment Weekly" назвал роман №82 в своем списке 100 лучших книг за последние 25 лет.
"Times" назвал его лучшим романом года и включил его в свой список "Лучшие романы всех времен".

Лауреат: Премия Национального круга книжных критиков / National Book Critics Circle Award, 2002 // Роман
Книжная премия "Лос-Анджелес Таймс" / Los Angeles Times Book Prize, 2002 // Художественная литература
Номинации на премии: Премия Коста / Costa Book Awards, 2001 // Уитбредовская премия за Роман