Product Description

The setting is Berlin. Into this divided city, wrenched between East and West, between past and present; comes twenty-five-year-old Leonard Marnham, assigned to a British-American surveillance team.Though only a pawn in an international plot that is never fully revealed to him, Leonard uses his secret work to escape the bonds of his ordinary life - and to lose his unwanted innocence. The promise of his new life begins to be fulfilled as Leonard becomes a crucial part of the surveillance team, while simultaneously being initiated into a new world of love and sex by Maria, a beautiful young German woman. It is a promise that turns to horror in the course of one terrible evening - a night when Leonard Marnham learns just how much of his innocence he's willing to shed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25275 in Books
• Published on: 1998-08-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Review
In part a thriller, in which the machinations of a top-secret Cold War telephone-tapping operation (the real-life 1955 Operation Gold in Berlin) are investigated and explained, and in part a murder/romance - boy meets girl, boy meets girl's ex-husband, ex-husband meets a graphically sticky end. Concise and controlled; a masterly, evocative page-turner. (Kirkus UK)

McEwan's latest - his best shot at a popular novel - is something of a departure from his previous work (The Child in Time, The Comfort of Strangers, etc.), but no less skillful in design or execution. Part romance, part murder mystery, and part spy intrigue, this cool tale of postwar Berlin relies on a number of historical and dramatic ironies for its punch. As the Cold War begins to freeze, Leonard Marnham, a shy and dithering young electrician from England, is assigned to work on a top-secret, Anglo-American project in West Berlin. With no experience in intelligence, the "clumsy, reticent" Brit is soon engulfed in a world of secrecy. Bob Glass, Leonard's gruff Yank superior, considers the English inept and sloppy, incapable of seeing secrecy as the essence of individuality. For over a year, they have to work together on a massive piece of spying - the creation of an underground tunnel into the Russian sector that will allow the CIA and MI6 to tap master phonelines. As Leonard and Glass develop an improbable friendship, neither knows that the Russians have been on to them since the beginning. Meanwhile, Leonard - the most obvious "innocent" here - loses his virginity to a 30-year-old German woman, Maria Eckdorf, and begins a relationship that must also be shrouded in secrecy. Just as they settle into the miserable ordinariness of living together, they're visited by Maria's ex-husband, a violent drank, whom Leonard kills in self. defense. Fearing disbelief, the young couple attempt to cover up their crime, of which they're technically innocent. But the difficulties of dumping a hacked-up body lead Leonard back to his workplace, and also cause him to betray the project. When the Russians crash through the tunnel - for reasons unrelated to Leonard's conscious treason - he's eventually called home, but his once-pure love for Maria has been irreparably defiled. A coda, set 30 years later, solves many of the remaining mysteries, and suggests the depth of innocence and false knowledge at play back in the days of high-spying. McEwan's clinical account of dismemberment reminds us of the dark imagination displayed in his other work - it's also bound to turn off the wider audience who would otherwise enjoy this clean and clever fiction. (Kirkus Reviews)

London Review of Books
‘The sheer cleverness of the book is dazzling, and only fully to be appreciated as you turn the last page...'

Mail on Sunday
'The plot crackles like thin ice with dread and suspense'

Customer Reviews

Wow!
Yes wow what a book. I saw Atonement which was rubbish in my opinion and thought no not ever will I read one of his books and yet on the way to Hong Kong at LHR-T5 i was captivated by the book's cover and the basic story line which interests me anyway. Berlin post war is a sumptuous backdrop and this book delivers magnificently. I could hardly put it down and apart from the dismemberment pages was an absolute thill. So much so that I then bought Black Dogs which isn't half as good but after On Chesil Beach and Innocent I am raring to go with more of his work. Well done Ian.

Brilliantly chilling!
The Innocent is the first book that I have ever read by Ian McEwan, although I had heard good reviews of many of his other novels. The innocent is set in Berlin, shortly after the end of the Second World War and during the increasing animosity between the Russians and the Americans. It follows the experience of Leonard - a very straight-laced and naive Englishman, who is sent to Berlin to work on a secret espionage tunnel. During his stay Leonard enjoys a relationship with a local German woman called Maria. Rapidly their life together goes from bliss to disaster as the plot unfolds.

The Innocent is an incredibly gripping novel that will keep the reader hooked to the very end. The characters are likeable and realistic enough to make you believe that dreadful things could happen to anyone simply because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time (not a pleasant thought).

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and look forward to reading many more by Ian McEwan.

Not half bad
Having read Atonement and not got on with The child in Time, i decided to read a book of Ian McEwan's that was more off the beaten track. What i found was The Innocent. I throughly enjoyed it and i would recommend that for anyone who didn't get on too well with Ian McEwan's other books to read the Innocent.

It is a gripping tale about how an English man in cold war Berlin gradually losses his innocence. It is a light and short read which i thoroughly enjoyed.