SOURCE: Annan, Gabriele. “Wages of Sin.” New York Review of Books 46, no. 1 (14 January 1999): 7-8.

In the following review, Annan commends Amsterdam, praising it as a “savage farce”and an “indictment of human nature.” Annan also lauds McEwan's descriptive skills, scientific acumen, and portrayal of children.

Ian McEwan is a prize winner. His novels and stories have won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Whitbread Prize, and have been shortlisted for Britain's most hyped trophy, the Booker Prize. This year he won it with Amsterdam. When the award was made in October, there were murmurs that it must have been an act of reparation by this year's Booker judges for their predecessors' mistake: the 1997 prize should have gone to McEwan for Enduring Love, which was thought to be a much meatier, longer and more profound novel. Amsterdam is an intricate satirical jeu d'esprit and topical to the point of...