Her sister's a pot-smoking radical whose life is beginning to unravel, but Serena wants to get on, and I think she's one of those people - I think it's something that's deep in personality some of us have it, some of us don't. 'She's a conventional girl she lives in unconventional times. On Serena's desire to please the MI5 men who interview her for the mission He joins NPR's Scott Simon to discuss the history that inspired his new novel and why novelists and spies go so well together. McEwan won the Booker Prize for the novel Amsterdam in 1998, and has been shortlisted for many other books, including Atonement and Saturday. Its code name is 'Sweet Tooth,' and that's also the title of McEwan's new book. She passes their test and is immediately handed her first secret mission: to cultivate and fund British intellectuals whose politics align with those of the government. She winds up on the clerical side of the operation, cross-filing schemes and plots to stop terrorists, until one day, in the middle of the Cold War, she's summoned to the fifth floor of the agency, where five wise men ask her to rank three British novelists according to their merit: Kingsley Amis, William Golding and David Storey. But he dumps her, and she never sees it coming. She got recruited into MI5 by her Cambridge history tutor, whom she wanted to dazzle. How?Īuthor Ian McEwan's latest creation, Serena Frome, isn't much of a spy. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Sweet Tooth Author Ian McEwan

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