Ian McEwan: 'You can't make identity the outer limit of your politics'

The author reveals at a Guardian Live event that his new novel, narrated by an unborn foetus, critiques current obsessions on university campuses

Ian McEwan’s latest novel is narrated by a disconcertingly precocious unborn child who has caught on to his mother and uncle’s diabolical scheme to murder his father. Nutshell is loosely based on Hamlet and is loaded with musings on fine wine (decanted, of course, “through a healthy placenta”), poetry, politics and the general state of the world.

“He’s a sort of left-of-centre foetus,” McEwan told a Guardian Live event on Monday. “I don’t know where he’d stand on Corbyn [and] Owen Smith, but he has quite a strong sense of social justice. He’s easily indignant; not all his views are mine.”

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