A young couple have their child snatched from them and are driven apart by despair. On a routine trip to the supermarket with his daughter one Saturday morning, Stephen Lewis, a well-known writer of children’s books, turns his back momentarily. When he looks around again, his child is gone. In a single moment, everything is changed. The kidnapping has a devastating effect on Stephen’s life and marriage. Memories and the present become inseparable - as Stephen gets lost in daydreams of the past - and time bends back on itself, dragging Stephen’s own childhood back into the present.‘This is the McEwan you and i have been waiting for… THE CHILD IN TIME is an extraordinary achievement in which form and content, theory and practice re so expertly and inseparably interwoven that the novel becomes an advertisement for, or proof of, its own thesis. I also found it very moving, the end beautifully so’ – Shelia Macleod, GUARDIAN ‘It is marvellously written, moving, serious, readable… If you want to be appalled, refreshed, exhilarated, enlivened- read it’ – John Carey SUNDAY TIMES