Random House is delighted to announce the publication of a new novel by Ian McEwan, Solar.

Solar is an engrossing and satirical novel which focuses on climate change and will be published on 18 March 2010. This story – of one man’s ambitions and self-deceptions – is a stylish new work by one of the word’s greatest living writers.

Michael Beard is in his late fifties; bald, overweight, unprepossessing – a Nobel prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. An inveterate philanderer, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. When Beard’s professional and personal worlds are entwined in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself, a chance for Beard to extricate himself from his marital mess, reinvigorate his career and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster.

Dan Franklin, Publisher, comments: ‘Solar is a novel about one of the most serious threats to our world – global warming – but is also very, very funny. It shows a fresh side to Ian McEwan’s work, that he’s a comic writer of genius.’

Visit your local independent bookshop to order Ian McEwan's books, or purchase them online via Waterstone's, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Borders, Nan A. Talese, Powell's, Jonathan Cape, Vintage, Random House Canada, Random House Australia, localbookshops.co.uk, or from a variety of Independent Booksellers.

Ian McEwan is scheduled to appear at four U.S. events to promote his new novel Solar. Please be sure to confirm dates and ticketing information directly with the event organizers.

Ian McEwan has published a piece of fiction titled "The Use of Poetry" in the 7 December issue of The New Yorker magazine. The story provides an early glimps into McEwan's new novel Solar, set for publication in March in the United Kingdom and April in the United States.

It surprised no one to learn that Michael Beard had been an only child, and he would have been the first to concede that he’d never quite got the hang of brotherly feeling. His mother, Angela, was an angular beauty who doted on him, and the medium of her love was food. She bottle-fed him with passion, surplus to demand. Some four decades before he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, he came top in the Cold Norton and District Baby Competition, birth-to-six-months class. In those harsh postwar years, ideals of infant beauty resided chiefly in fat, in Churchillian multiple chins, in dreams of an end to rationing and of the reign of plenty to come. Babies were exhibited and judged like prize marrows, and, in 1947, the five-month-old Michael, bloated and jolly, swept all before him. However, it was unusual at a village fête for a middle-class woman, a stockbroker’s wife, to abandon the cake-and-chutney stall and enter her child for such a gaudy event. She must have known that he was bound to win, just as she later claimed always to have known that he would get a scholarship to Oxford. Once he was on solids, and for the rest of her life, she cooked for him with the same commitment with which she had held the bottle, sending herself in the mid-sixties, despite her illness, on a Cordon Bleu cookery course so that she could try new meals during his occasional visits home. Her husband, Henry, was a meat-and-two-veg man, who despised garlic and the smell of olive oil. Early in the marriage, for reasons that remained private, Angela withdrew her love from him. She lived for her son, and her legacy was clear: a fat man who restlessly craved the attentions of beautiful women who could cook.

Pim, Keiron. "McEwan's Novel Take on Climate Change." Eastern Daily Press Books, 3 August 2009 [McEwan discusses his next novel, expected to be published in 2010].

From the interview: “That's another problem with writing about climate change - it's full of facts and figures. We're putting into the atmosphere 16 gigatons of carbon every year; it takes 16 terrawatts to run civilisation. It's very necessary to keep these out. My character is engaged in a project to use light to split water, imitating something of the process of photosynthesis. Even writing sentences about splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, already I know that about half the readers [will] see the names of those gases and their minds white out. Just seeing the word 'hydrogen', they panic."

Continuum is generously giving away free copies of Ian McEwan: Contemporary Critical Perspectives to undergraduate students. If you wish to enter the competition, please answer the following three questions:

1. What was the illustrious nickname Ian McEwan acquired in the 1970s?

2. In which unnamed city is The Comfort of Strangers set?

3. From which Jane Austen novel does Atonement take its epigraph?

The first ten students who email the correct answers will be sent a copy of the guide.

Please send an email with your answers to:
ccoalter@continuumbooks.com and include your name, the name of your university and your preferred postal address.

The competition ends when the tenth book has been given away. Good luck!

Ian McEwan:
Contemporary Critical Perspectives
Edited by Sebastian Groes
Continuum, 2009.
ISBN: 9780826497222

Purchase online from Continuum, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, BN.com, or a wide selection of high-quality Independent Booksellers.

Charles Frieth, preeminent composer, conductor and prodigious womaniser, is preparing for a performance of one of his early works, and the world premiere of "Demonic Aubade". Obstinate and myopic, he is oblivious to the growing turmoil around him; his wife's poor health and dissatisfaction; the exhausted efforts of his secretary; and, the disquieting diligence of his housekeeper, Maria.

As the first performance draws near, the maestro is suddenly awoken to the chaos, and as Charles struggles to regain control of his life, a terrible tragedy begins to unfold. "For You" is a beautifully wrought and compelling libretto - It is Ian McEwan at his very best.

Order a copy online via Vintage, Amazon.co.uk, or from a variety of quality Independent Booksellers.