The Child in Time

By: Ian McEwan

Narrated by: Nathaniel Parker

The Child in Time opens with a harrowing event. Stephen Lewis,a successful author of children's books, takes his three-year-old daughter on a routine Saturday morning trip to the supermarket. While waiting in line, his attention is distracted and his daughter is kidnapped. Just like that. From there, Lewis spirals into bereavement that has effects on his relationship with his wife, his psyche and time itself.

Critic reviews

Spooky...a wonderful novel

The Child in Time is an extraordinary achievement

It is marvellously written, moving, serious, readable... If you want to be appalled, refreshed, exhilarated, enlivened - read it

His masterpiece (Christopher Hitchens)

Artistically, morally, and politically, he excels

His best work to date

This book describes the panic of losing a child… The engulfing destructive pain is brilliantly explored (Alison Steadman)

The Child in Time is a dense, atmospheric book as much concerned with philosophical debate as with plot.

The Child in Time is an extraordinary achievement in which form and content, theory and practice, are so expertly and inseparably interwoven that the novel becomes an advertisement for, or proof of, its own thesis. (Sheila Macleod)