Discover the Sunday Times bestselling new novel from Ian McEwan. Lessons is an intimate yet
universal story of love regret and a restless search for answers. While the world is still
counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has descended young Roland
Baines's life is turned upside down. Stranded at boarding school his vulnerability attracts
his piano teacher Miriam Cornell leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never
fade. Twenty-five years later as the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spreads across
Europe Roland's wife mysteriously vanishes and he is forced to confront the reality of his
rootless existence and look for answers in his family history. From the fall of the Berlin Wall
to the Covid pandemic and climate change Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history but
more often struggles against it. Haunted by lost opportunities he seeks solace through every
possible means ¬- literature travel friendship drugs politics sex and love. Roland's story
asks can we take full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others? And what can
we learn from the traumas of the past? **A GUARDIAN AND THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR** 'McEwan's
writing is as elegant and ideas-packed as ever' The Times 'Lessons triumphantly achieves its
primary aim of conveying the commonplace and wondrous intertwining of global history and
everyday life' Daily Telegraph'McEwan's wry humanity and gentle amusement at his own generation
proves irresistible and a joy to read' Antony Beevor Spectator *Books of the Year*
