My Purple Scented Novel

By: Ian McEwan

Narrated by: Ian McEwan

Random House presents the audiobook edition of My Purple Scented Novel written and read by Ian McEwan.

‘You will have heard of my friend the once celebrated novelist Jocelyn Tarbet, but I suspect his memory is beginning to fade…You’d never heard of me, the once obscure novelist Parker Sparrow, until my name was publicly connected with his. To a knowing few, our names remain rigidly attached, like the two ends of a seesaw. His rise coincided with, though did not cause, my decline… I don’t deny there was wrongdoing. I stole a life, and I don’t intend to give it back. You may treat these few pages as a confession.’

A jewel of a book: a brand new short story from the author of Atonement. My Purple Scented Novel follows the perfect crime of literary betrayal, scrupulously wrought yet unscrupulously executed, published to celebrate Ian McEwan’s 70th birthday.

Critic reviews

The writing is beautifully clear

My Purple Scented Novel…is deliciously cynical in its refusal of moral implication. There is a lightness of touch and enlivening impishness at play (Ben Masters)

Ian Poe

The very first sentence reminds me of Edgar Alan Poe's "the Cask of Amontillado " and Poe's love.