Serena Frome, the beautiful daughter of an Anglican bishop, has a brief affair with an older man during her final year at Cambridge, and finds herself being groomed for the intelligence service. The year is 1972. Britain, confronting economic disaster, is being torn apart by industrial unrest and terrorism and faces its fifth state of emergency. The Cold War has entered a moribund phase, but the fight goes on, especially in the cultural sphere. Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is sent on a secret mission codenamed Sweet Tooth, which brings her into the literary world of Tom Haley, a promising young writer. First she loves his stories, then she begins to love the man. Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover life? And who is inventing whom? To answer these questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage - trust no one.

Sweet Tooth is published by Jonathan Cape and Knopf Canada in August and by Doubleday on 13 November. It was first available in Brazil in July by Companhia das letras.

Extracts available from The Guardian and NPR.

Note to Journalists and Reviewers: Publisher publicity contact information is located on the Contact / Publicity page. Please be sure to contact the relevant publisher when submitting your inquiry.

Reviews and Profiles

Doherty, Mike. "Spying with McEwan’s eye." MacLeans, 17 August 2012.

Cooke, Rachel. "Ian McEwan: 'I had the time of my life'." The Observer, 18 August 2012.

Greig, Geordie. "Sex, spies, the Seventies and me: Writer Ian McEwan in his most revealing interview yet." Daily Mail, 18 August 2012.

Anderson, Hephzibah. "McEwan’s Fetching Spy Seduces Writer With Dirty Money." Bloomberg, 19 August 2012.

Patalay, Ajesh. Harpers Bazaar, 21 August 2012.

Carrell, Severin. "I am an English writer, not a British one, Ian McEwan tells Alex Salmond." The Guardian, 22 August 2012.

Lasdun, James. "Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan -- Review." The Guardian, 23 August 2012.

Tonkin, Boyd. "Ian McEwan: Why I'm Revisiting the Seventies." Independent, 25 August 2012.

Taylor, Catherine. "Ian McEwan's 'Sweet Tooth' is a smoothly contrived spy story." Telegraph, 28 August 2012.

Errett, Benjamin. "Sweet Tooth, by Ian McEwan." National Post (Canada), 31 August 2012.

Hoffman, Tod. "Ian McEwan's new novel, Sweet Tooth, has British spies funding writers." Montreal Gazette, 31 August 2012.

Sutcliffe, J. C.. "With Sweet Tooth, McEwan Is at the Top of His Form." Globe and Mail, 31 August 2012.

"Sweet Tooth, by Ian McEwan." Macleans, 31 August 2012.

Myerson, Julie. "Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan – review." Guardian, 1 September 2012.

Sherlock, Tracy. "Tale of barrier-breaking woman spy weaves web of intrigue." Vancouver Sun, 1 September 2012.

Kakutani, Michiko. "The Spy Who Liked It Hot." New York Times, 4 November 2012.

Chai, Barbara. "Ian McEwan Revisits the Past With Sweet Tooth." Wall Street Journal, 29 October 2012. "Ian McEwan on His Ambitions for ‘Sweet Tooth’ (Part 2)." Wall Street Journal, 30 October 2012 [Interview with McEwan].

Brunner, Rob. "Sweet Tooth." Entertainment Weekly, 2 November 2012.

Roiphe, Katie. "Want To Understand Sexual Politics? Read This Novel." Slate.com, 7 November 2012.

Martin, Mark. "In Sweet Tooth, Little Ian's All Grown Up." The L Magazine, 7 November 2012.

Yardley, Jonathan. "Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan." The Washington Post, 9 November 2012 ["Ian McEwan’s delicious new novel provides all the pleasures one has come to expect of him: pervasive intelligence, broad and deep knowledge, elegant prose, subtle wit and, by no means least, a singularly agreeable element of surprise."].