Classic Twists: Atonement

"When I am dead, we will only exist as my inventions."

Published in 2001, Ian Ewan's Atonement is structured as a triptych. The first section, set in 1935, introduces us to a creative 13-year-old named Briony Tallis with a talent for writing, who becomes engrossed in a love affair between her sister and the houseoeeper's son. The affair being beyond her comprehension, it leads her to an unspeakable act, irrevocably altering the lives of everyone involved. In the second section, set in World War Two, we depart from Briony's perspective, tracing how her act has resounded through the lives of other characters – only to return to her in the third section, set in 1999, a masterful handling of how the events have shaped Briony's imagination and her burgeoning artistic practice.

At once a shape-shifting exploration of the nature of time and a metafictional inquiry into the essence of fiction itself, Atonement stands as one of the classics of contemporary literature. In this instalment of Rebecca Panovka's series on Classic Twists, she's joined by critics James Wood and Krithika Varagur to tease out the threads of McEwan's beguiling masterpiece.

ABOUT THIS EVENT'S GUESTS:

James Wood is Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. His novels and works of criticism include How Fiction Works, The Nearest Thing to Life, and most recently, Upstate. He lives in Cambridge, Massaceusetts.

Krithika Varagur is a writer and critic in New York. She is the author of The Call: The Global Saudi Religious Project, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, and The Paris Review.

Rebecca Panovka is a founding editor of The Drift. Her essays and criticism have appeared in Harper's, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Bookforum, Dissent, The Paris Review, The Drift, and elsewhere.

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This event is made possible in part from a gift from the Ann Thoburn Fund.

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