Where to start with Ian McEwan

British novelist, born 1948. Won the Booker Prize in 1998 and the Costa Novel Award in 1987.

Best Ian McEwan book to start with: Atonement (2001), on 10 of the 19 lists it could have made.

Atonement is the McEwan most people should read first. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Costa in 2001. It opens on a hot day in 1935 at an English country house, where a thirteen-year-old girl who wants to be a writer misreads something she sees, and the book follows what that costs. It reads easily and has a structure worth noticing.

If you want something shorter, On Chesil Beach is a novella about a wedding night in 1962, shortlisted for the Booker in 2007. Amsterdam won the Booker in 1998 and is a short, dark comedy about two old friends. Enduring Love, shortlisted for the Costa in 1997, begins with a ballooning accident and follows what it does to a man who witnesses it. The Child in Time won the Costa in 1987 and is about a father whose child goes missing.

The Comfort of Strangers and Black Dogs were shortlisted for the Booker in 1981 and 1992, and they are the darker, stranger books. Leave them until you know how he writes.