Reading Order
Saturday Reading Order
Saturday (2005) by Ian McEwan follows Henry Perowne — a neurosurgeon in London — through a single Saturday in February 2003, the day of the vast anti-Iraq War march that brought a million people to the streets. Perowne plays squash, visits his mother with dementia, collects his jazz-musician son from the airport, prepares a fish stew for a family dinner, and has a minor traffic accident with a man named Baxter who will return that evening to change everything. Saturday is McEwan's most Woolfian novel — a day in the consciousness of a confident, prosperous man who is forced by events to confront what underlies the civilization he has benefited from. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 2006.
Where to start
Saturday (2005)
Complete Saturday Book List
Saturday — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Saturday part of a series?
No — Saturday is a standalone novel. McEwan does not write series fiction.
Why is Saturday set on the day of the Iraq War march?
McEwan has described wanting to write a novel about a single day in the life of a successful professional at a moment of historical uncertainty — a secular, liberal humanist whose worldview is tested. The February 2003 anti-war march was the largest political demonstration in British history, and Perowne's ambivalent attitude to it — he supports the war — is central to the novel's moral argument.
Is Saturday a difficult novel?
Saturday is among McEwan's most accessible novels — it is linear, written in close third person, and its plot builds to a suspenseful domestic confrontation. The neurosurgery sections are detailed but not technical; McEwan researched them with real neurosurgeons.
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