Atonement

****NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A s* * ymphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness that provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from the acclaimed Booker Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author.
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** **One of the* New York Times* ’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • A *Kirkus Reviews* Best Fiction Book of the Century
“A beautiful and majestic fictional panorama.” —John Updike, *The New Yorker* ****
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood friend. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives.
As it follows that crime’s repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, *Atonement* engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.