Enduring Love

First edition. 8vo. Pp. [vi], 245, [1]. Grey textured cloth, lettered in gilt to spine; black endpapers. Cover artwork featuring Odilon Redon's 'The Eye like a Strange Balloon Mounts toward Infinity (L'Œil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini),' 1882, lithograph on chine appliqué, MoMA, (priced £15.99 to front flap).

Signed by Author to title page.

McEwan's sixth novel. The calm, organized life of science writer Joe Rose is shattered after witnessing a deadly hot-air balloon accident. Basis for the 2004 movie adaptation by Joe Penhall, directed by Roger Michell, which starred Daniel Craig, Rhys Ifans, Samantha Morton, and Bill Nighy.

A [fictional] appendix, penned by the author himself and purporting to be a scientific paper of a case study identical to the obsessive, stalking behaviour described in the book, led the New York Times reviewer – amongst others taken in – to criticize McEwan for having "stuck too close to the facts". In the August 1999 issue of The Psychiatric Bulletin McEwan finally 'fessed up: "I can confirm that Appendix I of Enduring Love is fictional, based on the novel that precedes it rather than the other way around."

"A remarkable novel, haunting and original and written in prose that anyone who writes can only envy." –Washington Post