more serious novels. His reputation remains higher in southern Europe (where he
lived) than in Britain, perhaps because of his Catholicism, which he could neither
believe in nor renounce. This was of a severe Augustinian kind which made him
mistrust social utopias.
Metropolitan novelists
A group of nove lists appeared in 1980s London, where they attracted a new kind
of media attention and some large advances from publishers: Julian Barnes
(b.1946), Ian McEwan (b.1948) and Martin Amis (b.1949). All flex their skills
rather noticeably , as does Salman Rushdie, who is discussed later. McEwan and
Amis are menacing, Barnes more intellectually organized. This metropolitan
fiction is often about London. Barnes’s first novel (1980) is Metroland,a title remi-
niscent of Waugh. Amis’s metropolitan trilogy centres on London Fields(1989),
and McEwan’s settings are sometimes as metropolitan as his tone, as in Saturday
(2005),about a day in the life of a London neurosurgeon on the day of a demon-
stration against the invasion of Iraq. It would be wrong to say that one could not
appreciate these writers unless one knows London, but the media fuss which
surrounded their work lent it a metallic glare when viewed from afar. Capital cities
have their own provincialism.
Ian McEwan
After reading English at the new University of Sussex,Ian McEwan enrolled in 1970
on the first year of the new ‘creative writing’ MA at the University of East Anglia, the
HQ of which had once been Percy Lubbock’s family home. The course was offered
by Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson, and concentrated on fiction; it was later
taken by Kazuo Ishiguro and other writers. McEwan’s first collection of stories,First
Love, Last Rites, in 1976, won a prize, as have a steady stream of books, which include
THE EMPIRE OF FICTION 411Novelists of the 1980s and after
Penelope Fitzgerald (1916–2000)
Anita Brookner (1928– )
Jane Gardam (1928– )
J. G. Ballard (1930–2000)
Beryl Bainbridge (1932–2010)
V.S. Naipaul (1932– )
Michael Frayn (1933– )
Penelope Lively (1933– )
A. S. Byatt (1936– )
Angela Carter (1940–1992)
Bruce Chatwin (1940–1989)
Piers Paul Read (1941– )
Pat Barker (1943– )
Rose Tremain (1943– )
W. G. Sebald (1944–2001)
Julian Barnes (1946–)Salman Rushdie (1947– )
Ian McEwan (1948– )
Peter Ackroyd (1949– )
Martin Amis (1949–)
Graham Swift (1949– )
Timothy Mo (1950– )
Helen Dunmore (1952– )
Hilary Mantel (1952– )
Sebastian Faulks (1953– )
Louis de Bernières (1954– )
Kazuo Ishiguro (1954– )
Alan Hollinghurst (1954– )
Caryl Phillips (1958– )
Jeanette Winterson (1959– )
Lawrence Norfolk (1963– )
A. L. Kennedy (1965– )