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The Innocent

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The Innocent

By: Ian McEwan
Narrated by: Steven Pacey
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About this listen

 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. Coming of Age Espionage Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Spies & Politics Thriller & Suspense Fiction Surveillance Suspense

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Critic reviews

To call The Innocent a spy novel would be like calling Lord of the Flies a boy's adventure yarn...it ensure McEwan's major status
The sheer cleverness of the book is dazzling, and only fully to be appreciated as you turn the last page: but then cleverness is a real virtue here, the best guide possible to the questionable territory between innocence and whatever comes after
It's the most tightly plotted of Ian McEwan's novels, and to argue properly for its excellence would involve showing how the political and emotional themes are inseparable from its narrative ingenuity, the patterns of revelation and about-turn which mark its final pages (Jonathan Coe)
Generous in scale, simple in its hideous impact...Ironically, he has celebrated the obsequies of the East-West spy thriller by writing one of the subtlest
Deft, taut fiction... Many English writers have been compared to Evelyn Waugh, often wrongly, but this book can stand with the master's best
All stars
Most relevant
McEwan at his best. Superb, tightly written masterpiece that showcases the art of concise writing. Never using two words when one will do, McEwan tells the story of a naive Englishman fumbling his way through the world of espionage in West Germany in the fifties. Beautifully paced and tightly written.

Masterclass in concise writing

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It was my first time exposed to McEwan's writing, and it definitely won't be my last. I loved the arc of the protagonists wet behind the ears' personality to reluctant spy through the situations he found himself in, brilliant.

Excellent stuff

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A generally good enjoyable read, would recommend as with most Ian McEwan books.
It did put me off my dinner at one point, but I’ll forgive.

Absorbing

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Pleasantly surprised - not quite the spy novel or the ending I was expecting.

I skipped the in depth gore as such things usually do not add anything for me. I still very much enjoyed the story.

Skipped the gore

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Ian McEwan can be a fine writer when he doesn’t tangle himself up in over-researched and irrelevant detail (as, for example, in “Saturday”). What he really excels at is storytelling and this is one of his most successful examples. It is a tale of intrigue and passion set in the ubiquitously suspicious atmosphere of the ruined post-WW2 Berlin, and the story keeps you gripped from the start. It ends with one of McEwan’s favourite literary devices - the understanding provided by looking back over a long sweep of time. The narrator is competent, though his German pronunciation is pretty awful.

One of McEwan’s best

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