Buy the set! Order On Chesil Beach now and receive the acclaimed 28-minute film about Ian McEwan for only $4 more.

Out of the Book's first edition features bestselling British author Ian McEwan and his novel, On Chesil Beach.

It is July 1962. Edward and Florence, young innocents, married that morning, arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their room, they struggle to suppress their private fears of the wedding night to come.

From Ian McEwan, winner of the Whitbread Best Novel Award (The Child in Time), the Booker Prize (for Amsterdam), and the National Book Critics Circle Award (Atonement), comes a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

It is 2007. An American bookseller and filmmaker spend the day with McEwan in London. Directed by Doug Biro (Herbie Hancock: Possibilities) and shot over four days in England and the United States, the 30-minute film includes interviews with McEwan in London, on-location footage from Chesil Beach, an original soundtrack, commentary from peers and critics, and more. By film's end, a press kerfuffle has been averted, Kafka has come up in conversation twice, and the natural balance of England's beaches has been restored.

"A nifty little flick... We shan't spoil the story — buy the book! See the movie! — but we will say it's worth the hyperbole. And the hype....This is McEwan, face-to-face." John Hood, Miami SunPost

"The film may be part of a beachhead of change in the way readers and authors connect." Bob Thompson, Washington Post

"If someone were to explain the concept to me, it would sound so simultaneously populist and intellectual that I'd swear it was a European fancy... A very smart and engaging little film." Chas Bowie, The Portland Mercury

"Tightly and carefully done." Ian McEwan, New York Magazine

Ian McEwan was born on June 21, 1948 in Aldershot, England. He studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970. While completing his MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia, he took a creative writing course taught by the novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson.

McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. Among them are the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites; Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction three times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday.

McEwan visited Portland, Oregon, on April 1, 2004, for the Portland Arts and Lectures series, sponsored in part by Powell's Books. Prior to the event, he sat down for an extensive interview with Powell's.

A groundbreaking series of compelling short films about authors. Out of the Book films deliver engaging portraits of writers and their work. More expansive than traditional readings, the project aims to generate spirited discussion about great new books and their impact on readers' lives.