
- Publisher:
- VINTAGE
- Year of publication:
- 1998
- Subject:
- Contemporary fiction
- ISBN:
- 978-0-09-927709-5
- Pages:
- 227
THE INNOCENT
OR THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP
IAN MCEWAN
The setting is Berlin. Into this divided city, wrenched between East and West, between past and present; comes twenty-five-year-old Leonard Marnham, assigned to a British-American surveillance team.
Though only a pawn in an international plot that is never fully revealed to him, Leonard uses his secret work to escape the bonds of his ordinary life -- and to lose his unwanted innocence.
The promise of his new life begins to be fulfilled as Leonard becomes a crucial part of the surveillance team, while simultaneously being initiated into a new world of love and sex by Maria, a beautiful young German woman. It is a promise that turns to horror in the course of one terrible evening -- a night when Leonard Marnham learns just how much of his innocence he's willing to shed. "From the Paperback edition.