Solar

Summary

Michael Beard is 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 halfheartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. While he coasts idly in his professional life, his personal life is another matter. A compulsive womanizer, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time the tables are turned: his wife is having the affair, and he is still in love with her.

When Beard’s professional and personal worlds collide in a freak accident, an opportunity arises for him to extricate himself from his marital mess, reinvigorate his career, and save the world from environmental disaster.

Ranging from the Arctic Circle to the deserts of New Mexico, Solar is a darkly satirical novel, showing human frailty struggling with the most pressing and complex problem of our time. A story of one man’s greed and self-deception, it is a profound and stylish new work from one of the world’s great writers. This is Ian McEwan at his finest.