A Move Abroad: or Shall We Die? and The Ploughman's Lunch

by Ian McEwan

"Or Shall We Die", an oratorio commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, concerns the arms race and our future. Ian McEwan, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award for his collection of short stories, "First Love, Last Rites" is also the author of "The Cement Garden".

Genres: Plays

118 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1989

About the author

Ian McEwan studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970 and later received his MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia.

McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday and his novel On Chesil Beach was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards where McEwan was also named Reader's Digest Author of the Year.

McEwan lives in London.

Reviews

[Mohit Parikh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 1989 edition starts with a preface that is about one-fifth the size of the collection and is the meatiest. Ian McEwan talks about his struggle to write a novel on the Cold War era political environment because he 'knew too much'. He had strong political opinions, even solutions for then current crisis (Falkland Wars), and that stunted him as a novelist. He was burdened with facts and figures and morality. So, he talks passingly of the political novels that survive the test of time (The Trial, 1984, Catch-22, The Satanic Verses), he quotes Kundera ("The novelist makes no issues of great ideas. He is an explorer feeling his way in an effort to explore some unknown aspect of existence"), and he justifies the decision to abandon the novel in lieu of an opportunity to write an oratorio.
'Shall We Die?', the lyrics of the oratorio, isn't particularly remarkable, but for the question it raises: Shall we change, shall there be womanly times, or shall we die? I found the work amateurish in the beginning (the scheme, the words simplistic) but was moved by the end of it. It was great to learn of the influence of the new physics on the writer. Disillusioned by war and politics, and with a baby coming, the McEwan of 1983 finds himself riveted by works such as The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav and Tao of Physics. I doubt after all these years he would talk of the philosophy in the same vein.
Ploughman's Lunch, the movie script, works. It is neat, and though the characters and their fates do not surprise, the dull, grim weather McEwan creates certainly absorbs you.

Read this work only to know Ian McEwan more closely. He is earnest.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

As much as I like Ian McEwan - at least up to Black Dogs - there’s no sugar-coating the fact this is the worst thing he ever wrote by a wide margin. The preface to Or Shall We Die accounts for a fifth of the whole (slim) book and is padded with the most awkward prose McEwan ever published - and I have two of his three uncollected early stories. The book’s redeeming feature is the rich mine of background material to The Child in Time.

[Chris Waterford · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea.
3/10

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wasn't sure what to expect from an oratorio, but 'Or Shall We Die' is spine-chilling. The Cold War may be over, but it's lost none of its power.

[Claire (find me on Storygraph) · Rating 4 out of 5]

McEwan and the Cold War. Loved it.