Rubriques
Solar
Type de publication:
BookAuteurs:
McEwan, IanSource:
Knopf, p.304 (2010)Texte complet:
An engrossing, satirical and very funny new novel on climate change.
Michael
Beard is in his late fifties; bald, overweight, unprepossessing — a
Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on
his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the
letterheads of renowned scientific institutions and half-heartedly heads
a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. An inveterate
philanderer, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time
it is different: she is having the affair, and he is still in love with
her.
When Beard's professional and personal worlds are entwined
in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself, a chance for Beard
to extricate himself from his marital mess, reinvigorate his career and
very possibly save the world from environmental disaster.
With a global scope, Solar
is a comedy dealing directly with the crises of today. A story of one
man's ambitions and self-deceptions, it is a startling and stylish new
departure in the work of one of the world's great writers.