Atonement Reading Order

Atonement (2001) by Ian McEwan opens on a hot summer's day in 1935 at a country house in Surrey, where thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses — and catastrophically misinterprets — a sequence of events involving her older sister Cecilia and Cecilia's childhood friend Robbie Turner. Briony's false accusation sends Robbie to prison and then to France as a soldier, separating him from Cecilia in ways that the war will make permanent. The novel's second and third sections follow Robbie at Dunkirk and Cecilia as a nurse in wartime London; the fourth section reveals the full complexity of what we have been reading. Atonement was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001 and adapted by Joe Wright into a widely acclaimed film in 2007 with James McAvoy and Keira Knightley.